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

Maybe David Duggins can loan Dan Coffey the NAHA community center. There'd be no need to fumigate something you're not planning on using, anyway.

Given Deaf Gahan's eagerness to appease Wizard of Westside, the only unanswered question is which gathering the mayor will attend.

Hospital sale: Gahanic hypocrisy aside, that's some nice party unity ya got there, boy wonder.

Surrealism simply doesn't play as entertainingly in the complete absence of ironic sensibility.

Nonetheless, in the service of stubborn persistence, I've underlined passages of interest to anyone who has ever tried to pry information from Jeff Gahan's City Hall.

More details emerge on proposed sale of Floyd Memorial Hospital; Answers on Little League donation, other questions given, by Jerod Clapp (Hanson Bible Tracts)

... Gahan said he's not aware of any invitations to him or other city officials to be involved in the process of the sale, but he's concerned about the county denying access to information.

"I don’t know what (Matt Oakley's) referring to," Gahan said. "Maybe he can elaborate and explain to the public exactly what the offers are, where the appraisals are and other information he can fully disclose. Tomorrow’s the vote," he said Monday, "and all I’m asking of him is to make those details public."

Gahan said the city needs that information to make sure its citizens are informed and he doesn't agree that the hospital sale has been a transparent process.

"I think we’re doing our job in encouraging the county council and the commissioners in making these documents public," he said. "I’ve been told I don’t have a say in it, it’s not a city issue, but when people call the office and they’re asking questions, it’s our responsibility to make sure we’re doing what we can to respond to that."

As the county council's scant two Democrats prepare to back Commissioner Chuck Freiberger's "no" campaign to the hilt ... they ... um, wait.

That's right. They aren't.

Gahan is disgruntled that his monopoly on secrecy is being challenged by county-borne upstarts -- including those in his own party.

• “Because of the nature of this business, it doesn't fall under the traditional model of appraising a piece of property,” (Brad) Striegel, who is in favor of the deal, said.
• “I am very excited about it,” said Councilman Tom Pickett. “For me it’s good to go.”

We might spend the next hundred years analyzing this, but the gist is easy to grasp.

County government, including both Republicans and Heavrin Democrats, long ago removed any consideration of revenue enhancement (including taxation rates) from the table. It's okay to discuss the potential intervention of space aliens, just not taxes. Now, the parties as ever combined in purpose, they're selling an asset to provide funding they couldn't/wouldn't acquire by other means.

Noting that the nominally democratic Gahan didn't actually oppose the sale, only parse the issue of transparency -- for which in his own fiefdom, there's no score lower than F -- it leaves the imperfect Democrat Freiberger as virtually the only one making a coherent opposition case.

Is this the best you can do, Adam?

Truth is stranger than fact: A whole day before the vote, Jeff Gahan publicly urges greater transparency in the hospital sale.

We're headed to the pawn shop with the hospital stuffed in a gym bag, but why this sale, and why now?

And with a donation and naming rights to the little league park's ball fields, finally the Floyd hospital deal makes sense.

With a scant five days notice, here's your chance to "speak out" about the Floyd Memorial Hospital sale.

Matt Oakley proposes giving the hospital to the Baptists for free, because otherwise, county government would have money.

Chuck Freiberger: Hospital sale non-transparency is bad, while Team Gahan non-transparency is ... THUMP THUMP -- is this thing on?

Jackson's Seafood has closed.

This prompted a rant of mine on Twitter:

Someone needs to say this aloud: Downtown New Albany needs to get its shit together, now. Businesses, non-profits, government ... now. 

Downtown is not finished. It is barely started, and exceedingly fragile. I see what's happening in Jeffersonville and across the river, and look around at the "players" here ... and it's fairly discouraging. No cooperation, no plan, and no signs of it changing. Mark my words: Without unity, this great experiment will be making no further progress, and in fact, might well regress.

I've warned you. I've been warning you. Sorry I had to get all apocalyptic on you. Is it beer thirty yet?

Thanks, but no thanks – I’ve no conscionable choice except to sit this one out.

It's the busiest time of the year for me, so I'm leaving this one on the marquee until Wednesday evening in the hope that a discussion will develop ... RAB.

----

All those current and aspiring city council members who’ve ever uttered the words “I’d do it for free” aloud, in public, please step forward.

Congratulations. You’re the new volunteer fire brigade.

Hell, we have to start somewhere, right?

Galoshes, horse-drawn wagons and wooden buckets are stacked in the storage area of the Floyd County Historical Society. Newly minted EMTs – don’t forget your leeches.

Readers are free to interpret the tortuous three-year saga of New Albany’s firefighter hiring ordinance according to any or all prevailing theories of human political, social and economic affairs, from Shining Path to Ayn Rand, and from Ronald Reagan through Noam Chomsky, and if at any point you’re able to make sense of it and discern any thread of consistency amid the shifting alliances and rhetoric, please don’t keep it to yourself.

Such insight just might qualify you to serve as mayor, fire chief, city council member or dogcatcher, or perhaps all -- or as is equally likely, none of them.

Verily, only one thing is beyond doubt, and that’s the long overdue discovery of the central active ingredient in the New Albany Syndrome: A profound inability of New Albanians to communicate with each other.

It’s the reason why it has taken so long to determine the best way to hire a firefighter, and moreover, it’s the reason why the current city council has wasted so much time on issues great and small during the course of its tenure.

But, given that we as residents tend to get the sort of government we deserve if we’re unwilling to work together to change it, poor communication is also the reason for the curious decision on the part of certain of the author’s 3rd District brethren that the “best” way to displace the incumbent – one of the chief symbols of the New Albany Syndrome’s inherently dysfunctional miscommunication – is to run not one, but two candidates against him, presumably to better split the anti-incumbent vote, ensure his re-election, and to help bring about the perfect circumstances for a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Now that’s New Albanianism at its finest – and most profoundly disillusioning.

Truly, we’re all cut the same in a town this size. The office holders we elect are no different than we are, and if we’re incapable of something so incredibly simple as uniting tactically around a single credible candidate as part of an overall strategic plan to lift the council bar, exactly how can we criticize the ensuing dysfunction?

In fact, by doing so, we’re enabling the dysfunction.

Effective communication among all parties involved might have precluded this unfortunate juncture, and yet at various times, critical elements have chosen to unilaterally excuse themselves from the numerous forums offered to facilitate communication.

Not unlike the firefighter hiring imbroglio ... and that’s very annoying for those of us seeking for three long years to be facilitators.

There are no hidden meanings in today’s sermon. If you’re reading this, you’re still a valued friend and neighbor. None of what I’m writing here changes anything in a personal sense, although the present absence of reassurance in any substantive and collective sense has jaundiced my view of future hope.

At first, I wasn’t going to speak of these 3rd district matters publicly, primarily because it would be easier for me if I were not forced to listen to the vindictive chortles of the congenital naysayers and semi-professional obstructionists, but in fact, and to be perfectly, brutally fair, these non-contributing hyenas have every right to enjoy a good laugh at our expense, because somehow we’re well along in the process of managing to pull the stupefyingly difficult feat of pulling the 3rd district rug out from under our very own feet even as we stand atop it.

Readers may recall this excerpt from my January manifesto:

Mr./Mrs./Ms. Candidate: Just in time for the filing period, here are my modified rules of voting engagement.

I regard the city council tenure of Steve Price as a nadir for my 3rd council district. I am absolutely positive that the district and the city need better if we’re ever going to escape the leaden grip of the self-defeating, self-perpetuating, underachieving and anti-intellectual New Albany Syndrome.

To my extreme and enduring embarrassment, I did not foresee the opposition’s pell-mell descent into the Syndrome’s crippling factionalism, and while I remain convinced of the reality that CM Price is the very embodiment of political inadequacy, it appears now that in personal terms, there’s no place for me in the 3rd district’s Democratic primary sweepstakes. Perhaps it will be a different story when the slate is wiped clean following the primary, but today, right now, according to the dictates of my conscience, I’m effectively nullified as an active participant in the forthcoming campaign.

As a public affairs blog, NAC will continue to report on activities pertaining to the 3rd district race, and on relevant pronouncements made by the three candidates. My colleague and co-editor Bluegill may wish to comment and editorialize, and he is perfectly free to do so, as I’ve not sounded him out prior to writing this essay.

It’s quite possible that he doesn’t agree with my position, and that you, the reader, don’t agree either, but please bear in mind that the preceding is a statement of personal conscience, and shaped by not only one, but by a series of factors largely outside my control as an individual.

So be it. See you in May.