With independent small businesses at risk, no use looking to a panic-stricken City Hall for help.

Always remember -- and never forget -- that in the case of New Albany, even if we're able to struggle back to our feet at any point this year, INDOT is waiting to cave our skulls in a second time with years upon years of Sherman Minton Bridge traffic dislocation.

As the mayor's captive council lackeys only now begin to fathom that they'll be the ones to take the fall for budget catastrophes in the wake of COVID, freeing Jeff Gahan to continue his own hallowed tradition of narcissistic pay-to-play campaign finance monetizing, it's clear that a Democratic-controlled legislative body will be of little help during the coming hard times.

Urban Enterprise Association? It's been annexed and gutted, existing only symbolically.

Develop New Albany? It's theoretically possible, although the organization's umbrella will have to get much bigger and its sad ongoing dependence on Gahan's political needs accordingly smaller.

City Hall as presently configured possesses no experience in dealing with a crisis. The rest of us will have to figure it out ourselves, and DNA needs to be a part of this solution. Exactly how is yet to be seen.

The Hyperlocal Support Small Businesses Need to Recover, by Patrice Frey (Governing)

It may be tempting, in coping with revenue losses brought on by the pandemic, for governments to reduce funding for community economic-development organizations, but it would be short-sighted.

With the recent replenishment of the Paycheck Protection Program, Congress and the Trump administration hope to avert a massive and catastrophic closure of small businesses amid the economic devastation of the COVID-19 crisis. But while the additional funds for the PPP are desperately needed, a successful rebound will require more than a one-time infusion of cash.

State and local elected officials will soon find that they are the next — and last — line of defense in protecting their communities (and tax rolls) from a failure of small businesses at a scale unlike any ever seen in this country. A recent study by our organization found that as many as 7.5 million small businesses are at risk in the coming months, especially those employing fewer than 20 people.

These businesses urgently need hyperlocal support systems that link businesses to resources that will aid them through the next 18 to 24 months. Fortunately, such support systems already exist in thousands of cities and neighborhoods across the country in the form of Main Street Programs, Business Improvement District associations and other kinds of downtown organizations. The local economic-development leaders who head these organizations are typically well known in their communities as trusted sources of information and as "connectors" to business support resources. They are also extremely knowledgeable about their communities' business environments and the local "players," which is invaluable in helping to broker creative solutions to get businesses through challenging times ahead.

And creative solutions will be in high demand. Small-businesses that survive stay-at-home orders, whether aided by the PPP or not, face a long and difficult recovery. Dramatic unemployment figures suggest that many Americans simply won't have the spending power they did before the crisis. Even where consumers are able to spend, their behavior is unlikely to return to pre-pandemic norms anytime soon. After stay-at-home orders are lifted, residual concerns regarding coronavirus transmission are likely to slow the recovery of the restaurants and retail and service businesses that are the heart of communities.

Business owners are likely to encounter a confusing patchwork of local, state, federal and philanthropic funding sources, and they are going to need help identifying suitable programs and navigating often-cumbersome application processes. They will also need advocates in their corner to work with property owners and negotiate lower or deferred rents, and they'll need assistance, where feasible, in transitioning some of their business to e-commerce. On this latter point, our research indicates that approximately two-thirds of small businesses have no online presence, a troubling figure given that online sales are likely to be a lifeline in the coming months.

The risk as state and local leaders look to trim budgets in the coming weeks and months is that they will cut any program that is not directly tied to health, human services and education. We've seen this before, post-Great Recession, when governments reduced or eliminated dollars for local business-support efforts. Such moves are short-sighted and have painful consequences, largely in the form of lost jobs and reductions to state and local revenue from taxes and fees. Ultimately, elected officials in many places elected to restart these programs, acknowledging that aid to local economic-development programs has a return on investment that far exceeds their cost.

In coming budget negotiations, elected officials will be wise to recognize that they are playing the long game in bringing their communities back from COVID-19. We can coax that recovery to a faster and stronger outcome if we can keep the focus of our support as hyperlocal as possible and if we can maintain the connector organizations that help small business on the ground, community by community. Ultimately, modest expenditures to support local economic-development organizations now will deliver a healthier and more stable tax base in the months and years to come.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

Last week was Harvest Homecoming, and my city's favorite amok time kept me pinned to the tarmac, but now we're back to what passes for normal here in New Gahania, where "We're All Here Because We're Not All THERE."

This week as a run-up to Decision 2019, I'm headed back into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five straight days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult. I've already made the case for Mark Seabrook as mayor.

Now let's return to the voluminous case against Gahanism in five informative and entertaining installments.

During Jeff Gahan's 2011 campaign for mayor, he proffered numerous private assurances to the effect that two-way streets and traffic calming would be priorities. In retrospect the fact that these promises were not a matter of the public record was ominous.

It took five years and another election for Gahan to actually get around to implementing a two-way grid reversion downtown, and hindsight also affords us the opportunity to see that the project, as eventually dumbed-down, emasculated and diluted from consultant Jeff Speck's suggestions -- shall we say, Gahanized? -- would not ever be brought to fruition without being tied to the system of pay-to-play political patronage which has been Gahan's only true accomplishment in office.

In short, until no-bid contracts for firms like HWC Engineering could be spider-webbed to produce maximum campaign finance enhancement, matters like safety and support for independent small businesses were of no consequence to Gahan ... and his minions, chief among them David Duggins, who at the time was married to HWC's local queenpin.

Hence the following Rubicon crossing moment, as recounted in ON THE AVENUES in late 2014. A little more than two years later, the starving public servant Duggins was dispatched to serve as Exalted Grand Poobah at the New Albany Housing Authority, seized by Gahan in the same fashion as European imperialists used to pluck colonies like lush grapes from the hands of vestal virgins, and handed to Duggins along with what probably was the single largest pay increase ever witnessed by a bureaucrat in New Albany.

But that's another story. Neither Gahan's street grid cowardice nor his poor taste in underlings was the first manifestation of Jeff Gahan's "inspired by Pyongyang" personality cult. In the grand tradition of failed watercolor artists, seminary students and cobblers, this middling veneer salesman concluded early in the game that destiny was clearing a path for his brilliance -- and we've been reminded of it on a daily basis ever since.

Why?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

---

November 20, 2014

ON THE AVENUES: Really, the word “progressive” embarrasses you? That’s okay, because political cowardice disgusts me.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

We’ve all experienced those disturbing times during a verbal debate when you know you’ve been whipped.

Your opponent’s grasp of facts and overall rhetorical excellence has you pinned, wiggle room is gone, and disaster looms. You can hope only to limit the damage, and perhaps survive to debate another day.

So it was that one of those times did not occur on Tuesday morning, during or after the merchant meeting, when the city’s economic development director, David Duggins, both publicly and privately read me what he imagined was an impassioned riot act.

Unfortunately, all he managed to do was concede almost every point we’ve tried to make in the past year with respect to City Hall’s persistent errors, with the result that the third floor’s credibility reserve is coughing vapors.

It may have been exasperation, anger, envy at City Hall’s inability to respond in kind, or maybe even exhausted vulnerability. I’m intentionally omitting delusional arrogance, but whatever the rationale, Mr. Duggins’s words to me formed a composite, abject expression of institutional impotence, one reeking of raw political terror, and offering further ample evidence that especially since November 4, when the local Democratic Party suffered a purely epic thrashing at the polls, the once mighty machine’s threadbare wheels have thrown their bolts and are rolling merrily across the landscape.

The cement blocks are being fetched, a motley collection of meth heads stands by eager to salvage copper wiring, and a fleet of U-Hauls are being dispatched to facilitate the magic kingdom’s overdue housecleaning. Surveying the carnage, Dixiecrat Party chairman Adam Dickey has chosen the junior high school tactic of censoring social media, but it’ll take more than a prayer breakfast and another failed “get out the vote” drive to avoid impending disintegration.

My shovel’s in hand. Just tell me where to dig. Better yet, maybe a few of us can dig together.

---

Mr. Duggins said many amazing things during the course of the group meeting and the private chat following it. Once my jaw dropped the first time, I left it safely on the floor to avoid over-exertion.

Although Mr. Duggins has not ever owned an independent local business, he freely offered marketing advice to those who do. He took a departed shop owner to task for being a complainer, when all she ever did was ask why the city allowed an adjoining building to fall quite literally to pieces outside her front window.

Perhaps the building commissioner was busy leveling historic buildings elsewhere.

Mr. Duggins openly conceded that the city does not customarily address sidewalks or sewers until a developer or realtor steps in, and an investor makes the first expenditure, and he brushed aside the counter argument that doing so beforehand actually might spur greater investment and constitute an actual economic development program, as opposed to piecemeal infusions of scattershot cash.

But it was my prodding on two-way streets, traffic calming and walkability that prompted the most memorable portion of the dialogue, and in the process, snapped this camel’s back.

---

To reprise, it has long been NAC’s contention that compared with pro-active “by the usual chamber of commerce numbers” efforts aimed at economic development as defined by the tired imperative of the suburban industrial park, this administration has neither understood the economic implications of independent local business, nor has bothered to openly embrace any organized, overt effort or plan to be of assistance to them.

Furthermore, while conceding that an economic development plan for independent local businesses, especially those located in a bloc amid the historic business district core, might be an unfair challenge to One Southern Indiana caliber non-thinkers in the absence of readily identifiable templates, we’ve insisted that thinking outside self-imposed boxes is by no means impossible. After all, these independent local businesses have invested heavily in themselves, with time, money and enthusiasm – and with almost no assistance from municipal governmental entities apart from “moral” support.

This is why we’ve consistently pointed to the city’s street grid as the ideal, contemporary infrastructure “bonus” readily available for molding into an asset occupying an extensive geographical area, one that enhances the urban experience for residents and visitor alike, whether working, shopping or living in or near downtown.

We’ve pointed to walkable and bikeable streets as an organic whole, running two ways, completed and calmed, and connected to IU Southeast, the Purdue Center, the Greenway and the Knobs, comprising New Albany’s only realistic equivalent of a magnet and generator comparable to the Big Four Bridge in Jeffersonville, because what makes the Big Four so special is that it is not at all special – it is open and available for public use every single day, not every now and then.

So it might be with two-way streets and walkability in New Albany, which brings us to the Jeff Speck study, as commissioned a full two years after mayor Jeff Gahan took office, in spite of campaign assurances that street reform would be pursued energetically.

---

And so it transpired that when queried about two-way streets, Mr. Duggins revealed a mind-blowing factoid guaranteed to impress, nay, astound, those who closely follow local events. For not once but twice, and in the strongest terms, he demanded that I come to grips with the ongoing Jeff Gahan term as undoubtedly the most progressive era in recent New Albany municipal history, and quite likely the most progressive period ever -- in a city that celebrated its 196th birthday just last year.

As proof, Mr. Duggins pointed in effect to the very absence of two-way street conversions, asking me to accept as evidence of City Hall’s innate progressivism an unrealized, barely enunciated intent – the many shadowy, non-transparent, Rosenbargian behind-the-scenes steps the city has taken thus far to commission Speck’s study, and to perhaps someday glacially come around to considering the incremental possibility of timidly sticking its toes into the waters of two-way streets and an accompanying, comprehensive street grid reform plan.

You see? Dyed-in-the-wool progressivism … in camouflage.

I was very confused. In fact, only moments before this presentation of Gahan’s solidly FDR-like progressive record, and still quite dazed at the Orwellian fog suddenly shrouding the proceedings, Mr. Duggins had somewhat imperiously dismissed the notion that those business owners in attendance might wish to talk about the street grid. Mind you, it was not his meeting to chair, and not his agenda to write. In essence, he refused to address the topic publicly. In fairness, he probably wasn’t happy with me for asking questions of substance.

Since he wouldn’t talk about streets while the others were there, I was compelled to wait until they had gone, and only then asked: If City Hall is a progressive entity, and if it recognizes the absolute necessity of street grid reform to help people like those in the room, as well as neighborhoods and the city’s prospects overall – as it constantly claims it does, privately – then in the name of wholly Jeeebus, why not lead the discussion?

Why not make sure that independent local business owners know the proven record of two way streets in promoting downtown business districts?

Why not make sure that neighborhood residents know the proven record of walkability enhancement in improving quality of life and lifting their property values?

Why not ensure support for the reform by getting out in front of the issue, driving it, and doing precisely what advocates are supposed to do?

Fairly paraphrased, here is the reply.

While impeccably progressive, City Hall could not possibly appear to be advocating progressive measures, not ever, because to do so would be to enable the administration’s powerful and dangerous naysaying enemies, who in spite of Jeff Gahan’s 64% vote tally in 2011 – the most lopsided majority in decades – somehow retain their uncanny ability to disrupt the mayor’s well-ordered universe at the merest hint of progressive leanings, because the “Old Guard” would be incited to … to …

To do what, exactly?

Well, to name the most prominent living example, any public appearance of progressivism on the part of City Hall would incite “Old Guard” stalwarts like Republican county commissioner Mark Seabrook -- of course the mayor dramatically and repeatedly spit in his eye during the course of the city-county parks department split, but that was different -- to rear back and belittle the helpless mayor by bellowing, “Ha Ha – you’re just appeasing those nasty progressives with two-way streets! Whatcha gonna do next, have some kind of FAIRNESS ordinance?" 

(Yes, I know what you’re thinking, but no. I’m paraphrasing, but honoring the tone. How could I make this up?)

Hence, the institutionalized New Albany City Hall Department of the Way on Down, Down Low, shielding the progressivism that dare not speak its name, a malady that only Speck’s study can dissipate, because then, and only then, can an administration with a 2/3 electoral mandate, but which remains terrified of Seabrook’s schoolyard taunts, finally point to the egg-head consultant’s findings and deploy them as the political cover it cannot function without. Note that I’d freely accused them of this very weakness on numerous occasions – and now the city’s economic development director wasn’t even trying to deny it.

Being the stubborn sort, I persisted: And yet, really, why couldn’t City Hall engage small business owners to explain the virtues of a walkable street grid?

If we did that and even one small business failed, they’d blame us.

Of course, right now, as it stands, the city’s interminable, fear-driven delay of street grid reform is quite effectively achieving the very same result, by leaving in place a one-way arterial street grid that nullifies every penny-ante ribbon cutting and “stay open late” promotion tossed into the air by increasingly desperate indie shop owners in the absence of a downtown economic development plan, because while street grid reform could be so very helpful, and constitute an economic development plan in itself, it would fatally embarrass a Democratic mayor to be seen openly advocating it.

It's exactly as if Gahan were to say it's okay to be gay, just as long as you don't kiss in public.

---

It’s simple.

I’m proud to be identified as a progressive, and what's more, I'm capable of presenting my reasons and arguing my points. But I’m far more ashamed of myself for supporting Gahan in 2011 than he is embarrassed at the ignominy of the term “progressive.” All I can do is learn from my mistakes. He doesn't believe he's made any. There's a difference.

One more thing.

Late in the chat, Mr. Duggins suggested I stop lashing the discredited, careerist city me-development wrecker John Rosenbarger, saying that at best, he was no more than a figurehead for the Main Street plan, and cannot be blamed for constantly acting through the years in such a way as to maintain his employment, even if it meant a steady stream of blatant lies sufficient to make Pinocchio blush.

I shrugged, but Mr. Duggins continued, assuring me that he’d never be one of those careerists like Rosenbarger; after all, he certainly isn’t making very much money working for the city of New Albany, and while personally loyal to the sitting mayor, he’d someday get out when the getting was good.

Teeth clenched, I smiled.

As one who has invested his entire life savings in a downtown business, and arises each day wondering when or if there'll be a return, there’s nothing like having the city's economic development director -- you know, the one without an economic development plan -- tell you that hes footloose and fancy free, and able to leave any time he wishes.

I won’t even waste a stray “go to hell” or "fuck off" on cluelessness of that astounding magnitude.

It's quite enough, thank you. If you refuse to take ownership, you’re not getting credit. Blame is another matter. Local Democrats in general, and the current administration in particular, always have dismissed progressive ideas because they feared no consequences. As such, we’re obliged to try to prove them wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines, because the insurgency begins right ... now.

David White for Mayor videos: State of the City #3, Parts 1 and 2 on the general theme of economic development.

Viewers and voters are free to agree or disagree with David White's points about economic development, but what can't be denied is that if Jeff Gahan actually has an economic development plan apart from pay-to-play, we know next to nothing about it after eight years.

Gahan's first quarter CFA-4 has been filed, and it's another massive, quivering edifice of pay-to-play cash.

Like so many other aspects of Gahan's reign, his economic development strategies are to be coded and kept safely hidden, so when something positive actually happens, no criteria exist to determine whether Team Gahan had anything to do with the result -- as with HMS Maritime's upgrade, which is almost entirely the work of One Southern Indiana, not Dear Leader.

HMS Maritime's downtown expansion is a positive development, one largely omitting City Hall.

David and I have spoken often about grassroots economic development strategies of the sort espoused by the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) and the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE). There are many ways to achieve cooperation between local government and local entrepreneurs, short of prom planning and Taco Walks.

Although first, City Hall has to want to be cooperative. That's something I'm confident you'll see quite a lot more of during David's time as mayor.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

Miss Emery's ice cream parlor, economic development and the politics of awarding credit.

In an email, regular reader B refers to a post here at NAC on Saturday evening.

Greenville, Georgetown and Duncan capitulate as giddy Gahan boasts that New Albany is "the economic engine of Floyd County." No shit, Sherlock. But not so much regionally, eh?

When you ask ...

"Can anyone capable of reading and comprehending these words cite a single instance of (3rd district councilman Greg) Phipps being involved with economic development during the past eight years, apart from attending the stray ribbon-cutting, and issuing rote rubber-stamp approval of every expenditure ever handed him by Team Gahan?”

You forget how Mr. Phipps arm-wrestled everyone on the council and won the rights to Miss Emery’s ice cream parlor, locating the historic structure in his district.

A big WIN, sadly forgotten!

Our reader is referring to the long-forgotten saga of the little building pictured above, which for decades was situated in the front yard of a house on Beharrell Avenue and housed an ice cream dispensary. The business petered out at some point during the early 1990s, and eventually resurfaced in Corydon with the old equipment and new owners.

Meanwhile in 2009 the humble little building became an unlikely cause célèbre when the property changed hands and the new owner began to demolish it. Evidently older members of the community's historic preservation contingent were overwhelmed by pleasant memories of youth and pervasive nostalgia about bygone times, and they threatened to chain themselves to the structure until it was "saved."

The owner said fine, take it -- and get out of my yard. For three years the former parlor reposed atop blocks behind a house on Main Street as downtowners scratched their heads in puzzlement as to why preservationists were expending their political capital in this fashion.

Concurrent with this four-alarm outbuilding rescue a far larger and much more expensive kerfuffle centered on the decaying Weinmann-Hess building on the northwest corner of 8th & Culbertson, or as many of us knew it, the Alligator Tavern.

To make an exceedingly long story somewhat shorter, then-mayor Doug England took a peculiar interest in the Weinmann-Hess building and pledged a pot of money toward preserving it.

Unfortunately the money actually belonged to the Urban Enterprise Association, which had not been asked if it approved of shifting these dollars from UEA programs already in progress to variable political whims in suspension.

The Fix to enable the fix duly was executed, the UEA-ATM was emptied, and three years of fits and starts followed in an effort to stabilize and prep the building to be sold.

You saw it here first: The Emery/Culbertson Connection, Phase 453 ...

If these gyrations seem muddled, that's only because they were, and by early 2012 it had been decided that the perfect place for the Emery's Ice Cream shack was the backyard of the Weinmann-Hess building, where it stands to this very day, apropos of nothing.

Now, back to Reader B's observation about Phipps' role in the Great Emery's Ice Cream Hovel Economic Redevelopment Plan of 2012, as Tricky Dickey surely would refer to it in one of his robotic boilerplate press releases.

Phipps defeated incumbent 3rd district councilman Steve Price in the 2011 primary, and won his current seat that fall. By the time he'd been sworn in, the Emery's tale was three years in the making.

Granted, I seem to recall that during this period, when Phipps did not serve on the council, he nonetheless was a strong advocate of the various cash-laden remedies for the former ice cream parlor as well as the Weinmann-Hess building.

But as an aside, Phipps famously refused to apply precisely the same logic in 2015 in very similar circumstances involving the old Haughey's Tavern building: "Tear It Down," Sayeth the Councilman, Part 2: "Just how has this been a corrupt process?" Hint: Secretive nonsense.

The central question, then: According to the usual rules of the game in New Albany, as formulated by the same tired suspects, can Phipps take full and unalloyed credit for the economic development windfall provided by the relocation of the Emery's Ice Cream building, even though he was on the public payroll for only the last few months of a three-year-long farce?

Let's go to Jeff Gahan's wheel of fortune and give it a spin.

YES he can.

NA Confidential appreciates reader input. Thanks to B for helping to put the credit where the credit is due.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

Greenville, Georgetown and Duncan capitulate as giddy Gahan boasts that New Albany is "the economic engine of Floyd County." No shit, Sherlock. But not so much regionally, eh?

Democrats are slobbering in ecstasy that we're slaughtering Galena; meanwhile, New Albany continues to steadily lose ground regionally in terms of economic development and job creation.

What we do have in abundance -- an indie business and entrepreneurial class -- labors under Jeff Gahan's insistence that (a) they receive few of the incentives and subsidies lavished elsewhere, and (b) he's responsible for their success, anyway.

Thus the sad pantomime. Here and there Wendy Dant Chesser tosses Gahan a few crumbs; in reply, Gahan and what's left of his captive council minions buy a few pencils from One Southern Indiana.

For eight years we've been waiting for Gahan to present and explain a coherent economic development strategy in this time of River Ridge hegemony and the concurrent loss of companies like Pillsbury (and remember Samtec's new plant ... in Scottsburg?)

For eight years, we've heard barely audible gurgling sounds in response -- and so with nothing concrete to offer, Gahan and the Democrats just conjure whoppers out of whole cloth.

Regular readers know how difficult it can be for reality-based people to fathom the DemoDisneyDixiecratic fantasyland wherein Tricky Dickey churns out fabrications, concoctions, fibs, cock and bull stories and fake facts almost as quickly as Putin's computerized bots.

What's worse, his press releases never vary from the Democratic National Committee's style-free user's manual -- which is to say, they're unreadable. Like so many other fiction writers, perhaps Dickey is paid by the word.

Let's be perfectly clear, Mudd.

HMS Maritime's expansion in New Albany had nothing to do with Jeff Gahan, although even one as skeptical as me can plainly see why this or any other sitting mayor seeks to take credit for each and every sunrise, taco and subsequent bowel movement.

But Greg Phipps?

Can anyone capable of reading and comprehending these words cite a single instance of Phipps being involved with economic development during the past eight years, apart from attending the stray ribbon-cutting, and issuing rote rubber-stamp approval of every expenditure ever handed him by Team Gahan?

Yet he is commended for "sponsoring" incentives written by City Hall's legal team. By this same skewed logic, 5th district councilman Matt Nash personally engineered the deal to spend a few million more in TIF-ATM funds for the Colonial Manor property.

As the kids say, "OMG."

Readers, we've all heard politicians lie. That's a real fact, not a fake one. But I can't recall a time when the "leading element" of the local Democratic Party has lied to such a breathtaking extent. Nor can I remember this much Kool-Aid and Loaded Rice Krispie Treats being consumed by the rank and file.

It's almost as if the quiver's empty, and self-delusion is all they have left.

---

Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing. 

After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan's list of stunning "achievements" is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide 'n' seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It's time to drain Gahan's swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan's Indy-based special interest donors. 

NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7. 

It's good for special interest campaign donors, but "Is a Top-Down Approach the Best Way to Revitalize Downtown?"

From the top, down -- you know, the same way water and debris washes down the side of the Summit Springs development whenever it rains.

Is a Top-Down Approach the Best Way to Revitalize Downtown? by Daniel Herriges (Strong Towns)

The scars of 1950s urban renewal still haunt many American cities. Among them is Richmond, Virginia, where a section of downtown called Navy Hill, at one time a thriving African-American community, was decimated to facilitate the construction of Interstate 95 and, eventually, make way for the Richmond Coliseum.

Now, Richmond is weighing a controversial project to reinvent Navy Hill in one fell swoop yet again, this time through a partnership with a private developer to do a billion-dollar redevelopment of 10 blocks of city-owned land. The resulting master-planned entertainment district would contain a brand-new stadium and event venue, hotel, food hall, and some 2,500 housing units—funded in large part through tax increment financing (TIF) that would commit a major portion of future property taxes not just from Navy Hill but from a surrounding area eight times as large. Local critics have questioned the expansiveness of the TIF district, and whether Richmond is mortgaging too much of its future on this project.

Strong Towns was invited to submit an op-ed to Richmond Magazine explaining why we think this is a huge gamble with a high opportunity cost—and the city should consider more incremental approaches to achieving the same ends of revitalization and increased wealth. Here it is. The below article was originally published in Richmond Magazine, and is reprinted here with permission.

There are incremental, neighborhood-oriented alternatives. They don't generate the same volume of cash for incumbent mayors; then again, maybe people living in neighborhoods should be the first objective and not fat cat donors living in Carmel.

The Incremental Alternative

A city like Richmond can do a lot to support and accelerate more organic forms of growth. At Strong Towns, a national advocacy organization that supports a model of development that allows cities to become financially strong and resilient, we call this model “Neighborhoods First.” There are hundreds of small investments in quality of life, vitality and public safety that the city could make right now, and we’ve found that it’s often these projects that deliver the highest return on investment for a local government’s scarce resources. A humble crosswalk, some street trees and a facade grant can bring up property values and begin virtuous cycles of private reinvestment. Technical assistance and workforce development efforts can give homegrown entrepreneurs a boost.

These investments are modest individually, but transformative in aggregate, because they respond to immediate needs.

You can learn more here: Neighborhoods First: A low risk, high return strategy for building a strong town. Note that Brainerd, Minnesota is the home town of Strong Towns founder Charles Marohn.

Cities across the country are starting to realize that the “big project” approach takes up too much staff time, wastes too much political energy and distracts too much from the basic needs of existing neighborhoods. Risky, low returning projects too often become expensive boondoggles that haunt a community for decades. Public officials everywhere are desperately seeking an alternative.

Neighborhoods First; A low risk, high return strategy for a better Brainerd is an example of how a community can grow stronger by making small, incremental investments over time. By observing how neighbors live their lives, by asking them where their daily struggles are, by getting out on the street and discovering what is actually going on, any local government can discern what their community’s pressing needs are. These projects are the high return investments and they are all around us.

As an example, think back to Mayor Jeff Gahan's secession from the NA-FC Parks Department, and our subsequent TIF-impelled expenditure of somewhere between $18 and $25 million to construct bright, shiny, big-ticket, park-like objects. At the time many of us offered the alternative of using half (or less) of the money to scatter smaller park areas throughout the city's neighborhoods, in places where potential users could walk and ride bikes and not be compelled to rely on their cars to reach centralized facilities.

But the parks boondoggle obviously had been pre-planned, even if there was no discussion of it during Gahan's first campaign for mayor. A better way would have been to involve the community in the plan.

But Gahan's not a listener, is he?

Few autocrats are.

UNDERSTANDING PARKS

Too much is expected of city parks. Far from transforming any essential quality in their surroundings, far from automatically uplifting their neighborhoods, neighborhood parks themselves are directly and drastically affected by the way the neighborhood acts upon them.
- Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities

There is a common belief that a city park is necessary to compensate for the lack of open space urban residents have when compared to those that live on the outskirts of town. This tragic misunderstanding of the role of an urban park has caused us to overlook a prime asset in Northeast Brainerd.

A good park radiates value to the surrounding neighborhood in the same way the sun radiates heat; the closer you are, the more value the park should add. While New York City’s Central Park would be extremely valuable if it were developed, the immense value of Manhattan and the other boroughs adjacent to it would suffer if the park become a housing subdivision. The location and design of the park makes the city valuable.

At the same time, it is the city that makes the parkland valuable. If we took a piece of land in rural Iowa and re-created Central Park, it would not have any real value.

It takes people using the park to build and create the value that is then reflected back to the neighborhood. A lifeless park is the sign of a lifeless neighborhood. Fixing what is wrong with Mill Park is critical, but doing so will not restore Northeast Brainerd to prosperity. The two need to happen together.

An urban park is not compensation for a neighborhood’s shortcomings. It is a reflection of a neighborhood’s value and worth and, as such, is the most revealing barometer of success or failure the city has.

*Recomended reading: The quote from Jane Jacobs above is Chapter 5 of the book, which is all about urban parks.

Attention, candidates: Grassroots economic development by working closely with local entrepreneurs to learn how the city can help foster their ideas.

Utilizing assets like The Root.

Tonight Develop New Albany holds its annual Be Local Expo, a once yearly promotion of independent small businesses. Of course there's nothing intrinsically wrong with this approach, although it falls well short of the everyday engagement required to build and nurture the independent small business community. An "expo" is a showy thing, and the incumbents can glad-hand in a convivial setting.

But there could be so much more.

ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

As long as our City Hall team prioritizes its own absolute iron-fisted political control, and refuses to consider small, sustainable efforts to support the expansion of entrepreneurial endeavors -- "creating avenues to wealth creation at all levels of society," as opposed to maximizing Gahanite campaign finance -- we'll continue to endure the pre-eminence of the prom planning committee, with predictably self-serving and tepid results.

The following podcast link offers a different scenario. Imagine if New Albany possessed fewer paid event coordinators and prom planners, and instead emphasized an "Ecosystem Builder" as described therein?

Isn't our best alternative to the subsidized-from-above River Ridge employment model to contrast and complement it with a grassroots approach like this?

Economic development is far more than squeezing a few extra dollars from the city's exhausted TIF lodes, showering outsiders with gifts underwritten by taxpayers, then waiting for incoming campaign contributions to close the circle. That's not economic development. It's a personality cult.

Better to make the most out of ourselves, right here where we live, by circulating more money locally and encouraging the social network-driven aspect of entrepreneurial activities. Cooperation creates the ecosystem, and the ecosystem fosters cooperation -- and a boost for our sense of community.

Consider listening to the podcast and learning, especially if you're mounting a campaign for local office. Perhaps the chief reason to #FlushTheClique, #DrainTheGahanSwamp and depose a few tired Democratic office holders is to get some fresh air into this civic room.

Theirs isn't the only approach to advancing the local economy. It's just the one with maximum benefit to them.

---

Why One City Hired an "Ecosystem Builder" to Support Entrepreneurs, by Jacob Moses (Strong Towns)

Want to better your community but don’t know where to start? Enter It’s the Little Things: a weekly Strong Towns podcast that gives you the wisdom and encouragement you need to take the small yet powerful actions that can make your city or town stronger.

It’s the Little Things features Strong Towns Community Builder Jacob Moses in conversation with various guests who have taken action in their own places and in their own ways.

For city officials desperate to create jobs, winning over a big corporation and convincing them to set up shop in your hometown may seem like the only option. Yet in the midst of this race to the bottom, city leaders often overlook the lower-hanging fruit right in their backyard: local entrepreneurs.

And when we say “local entrepreneurs,” we’re not just talking about the tech guy working on a new app alone in his basement or that one friend you have who left their 9-5 job to “go freelance.” Not all local entrepreneurship is so solitary, and it can take some surprising forms: the at-home baker who dreams of having her own storefront bakery downtown, the college student who wants to create a local startup. And they all have the potential to be job creators in your local economy.

Of course, a thriving startup community doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Support from city leaders is invaluable to help tap this potential.

That’s why in this episode, I chat with Skyler Yost, founding member of Strong Towns and Ecosystem Builder for the city of York, Pennsylvania (a pretty cool job title, I know). For the past two years, Skyler has worked closely with local entrepreneurs to learn how the city can help foster their ideas.

In this episode, you’ll learn how you can foster entrepreneurship in your community, including how to assess existing resources, how to create an ecosystem in which entrepreneurs are supporting one another, and most important, how fostering entrepreneurship makes your place stronger and more resilient.

ON THE AVENUES: Prom planning's nice and all, but New Albany still needs an autonomous independent business alliance.

“Good morning, Mr. Baylor. How are you doing?”

“Well, I’m doing fine, and as soon as I haul this kitty litter home it will be time for another coffee, and maybe that will help a bit, at least until cocktail hour. Actually, you can make a pretty strong argument for cocktail hour almost any time of day, except you run into those pesky wee hours when the bars are all closed, but that’s why sensible folks keep their liquor cabinets stocked at home, because your living room never closes. Flasks are even better. They keep your libation of choice toasty and close, and did you know that flasks were popularized during Prohibition? That’s right, we needed a 13-year-long flask to maintain harmony until the bars reopened after Repeal. Hell, we still do. If it was up to me, we’d have a museum about Prohibition, and force the school kids to go. Until then, there’s always cold beer and hot tickets.”

“You’re all set. Have a great day, Mr. Baylor.”

---

I won't deny that a quarter-century of small business ownership has left me a tad exhausted. Near the end of my NABC tenure I often wistfully recalled the words of John Kennedy Tootle's fictional Miss Trixie from his novel, A Confederacy of Dunces.

"Am I retired?"

But it's hip to be square, so last week I attended Develop New Albany's neighborhood soiree at Breakwater. As parties go, it wasn't too bad. The food and music were great, the acoustics horrendous and the beer selection embarrassing, but what left me baffled like always was the preposterous litany of talking points as presented by a succession of DNA board members in a feat of non-ironic propaganda that would have curled Khrushchev's hair.

Did I mention Nikita was bald? The Breakwater residents in attendance were looking around and saying, dude, who are these people?

Let's paraphrase DNA's ludicrous City Hall-ghosted script.

Independent businesses have invested $60 million or more in downtown New Albany these past ten years -- and so DNA will continue to take credit for the success of these investments in spite of the plain fact that DNA has had absolutely nothing whatever to do with them.  

All a guy can do is stand there clutching his flask and thinking, "Hallucinate often?" Yes, there are many things a high school prom planning committee can legitimately achieve, occasionally stepping out of character by utilizing an idea that wasn't brazenly stolen from someone else, but for them to persist in claiming a leading role when it's really been someone else's time and money is ludicrous and surreal -- and it needs to stop.

This is why New Albany's next mayor must immediately redirect DNA willingly or otherwise back toward National Main Street’s Four Point approach, thus helping DNA to get its local mission right for once, and by doing so openly address a key element of economic vitality by stating the unvarnished truth:

New Albany's ongoing revitalization has been led almost entirely by independent locally-owned small businesses, which have invested cash, energy and creativity alongside a cadre of primarily hometown local developers and builders. As such, the next logical grassroots step is for City Hall to help midwife an independent business association -- then get the hell out of the way.

I've bounced this idea off David White, and he gets it. If Mark Seabrook and Dan Coffey are reading, please let me know what you think.

Back in 2011, an independent business association is exactly what Jeff Gahan told some of us he was going to put his weight behind. He didn't, and as we've since learned, he couldn't, any more than my cat can sprout wings and zoom to a grain-fed all-mouse deli in New Jersey.

Gahan's only default mechanism is control, and he annexed DNA in precisely the same fashion as the housing authority, hitching it to his own circled wagon and rendering this purportedly non-political organization into an in-house appendage of his re-election campaign.

Coming soon: mandatory ribbon cuttings for all New Albany businesses -- five or six times until November, if necessary to re-enthrone Dear Leader.

Naturally, using DNA as a plaything provides greater benefits to Gahan for keeping his cult of personality afloat, but an independent business association would offer far greater returns in economic advancement for the entire city. Sadly, beginning in 2012 we learned the hard way that when City Hall generates a head wind against you, it's unlikely you'll be getting up to speed.

This isn't to excuse the independent locally-owned small business community for a certain level of ongoing passivity, only to recognize with eyes wide open that while Gahan has alarmingly few abilities as a cash-stuffed political hack, one of them undoubtedly is a degree of skill at playing the "divide and conquer" game.

Bullying goes hand in hand with this, and fear of the consequences makes it problematic for indies to resist, so pending the imminent electoral flushing of the patronage clique, indies can get started by heeding the advice of the American Independent Business Alliance (AMIBA) and embracing a simple but eloquent truth: 

 "There truly is strength in numbers."

AMIBA's characterization of the situation follows. If you own a business or know someone who does, please read and share it.

Because Community Matters

Think of your favorite shop, restaurant, farm or service provider. We’ll bet it’s a homegrown business. Independent locally-owned businesses are essential to a vital local economy and community character. They’re where the locals go. They’re owned by our friends and neighbors, or maybe even by you.

Community-serving businesses are the backbone of local economies, civic life, local charities, and wealth creation for millions of citizens, as well as a training ground for future generations of entrepreneurs.

Problem: Today, independent businesses face unprecedented competition from larger chain competitors, internet merchants and franchises that enjoy national or international branding power and major economies of scale. As a result, community-based businesses comprise a smaller portion of our economy than ever before. We’ll lose much more than places to shop, dine or do business if we allow current trends to continue.

A Proven Solution: Many cities and towns have discovered a model, pioneered by the staff of the American Independent Business Alliance, to counter these trends successfully and help local entrepreneurs thrive. More than 85 communities in North America now boast Independent Business Alliances to unite independent businesses across all sectors, along with concerned citizens to build vibrant, durable local economies. AMIBA can help you use our models to implement an effective buy local campaign, pass pro-local public policies, facilitate effective collaboration among local businesses and more. There truly is strength in numbers. Learn more about benefits of AMIBA affiliation or the four realms of IBA work. You’ll love what an IBA can do for your business or community!

Why expend the effort? Because division is so costly.

When it comes to power, a vacuum is a condition waiting to be filled. In New Albany, with Gahan's default imperative remaining absolute control to the exclusion of intellectual content, entities like DNA (and to an extent One Southern Indiana) are delighted to fill the vacuum created by the absence of indie self-organization, which if achieved would advance the indie business segment's economic interests as a cohesive bloc and make possible the concentration of power as a purpose-built collective.

How many members of Gahan's City Hall clique have ever owned an independent small business? If indies are to have an organization, shouldn’t it be an organization whose primary purpose is to advance the clout of indies? Indies themselves know best, don't they? 

What's more, there is no reason why a New Albany Independent Business Alliance (for a model, think LIBA, the Louisville Independent Business Alliance) could not exist in cooperation with a reformatted DNA’s economic vitality mission, as a component of what National Main Street now refers to as “cross-cutting Community Transformation Strategies." Genuine possibilities exist.

The point is this:

Independent locally-owned small businesses have driven New Albany’s revitalization, and yet in terms of decision-making, the reins are nowhere close to the hands of the folks who’ve done the work.

Why do we not insist on input -- on power -- commensurate with our achievements?

Gahan desires a rubber stamp, not an active and equal partner, but if the mayor and his lickspittles are unwilling to cooperate, shouldn't we be eager to usher forth the era of "next" as quickly and expeditiously as possible?

#FireGahan2019

---

Recent columns:

February 26: ON THE AVENUES: Pretty in pink slips, aren’t they? Those who mutilated Speck need to be cashiered.

February 22: ON THE AVENUES SPECIAL: Take your cult of personality and shove it, Dear Leader.

February 19: ON THE AVENUES: I'd stop drinking, but I'm no quitter (the 2019 Gravity Head remix).

February 12: ON THE AVENUES: If it's about learning and knowledge, then by definition it's a Gahan Free Zone. You're welcome.

February 5: ON THE AVENUES: Our mayor hates non-elected boards -- except when they're his own, which is why "hypocrisy" is spelled G-A-H-A-N.

A Tax Increment Financing (TIF) primer, noting TIF's chumminess with insider corruption, and certain grassroots alternatives to big ticket glitz.

Tax Increment Financing (TIF) came up a lot when I ran for mayor in 2015, so much so that the Bookseller created a paper for consultation by our team.

---

A Baylor Paper on Tax Increment Financing

HISTORY: Tax Increment Financing, commonly known as T.I.F., is a method created by the legislature that allows a city to invest borrowed money in the hopes that the investment will increase property values in a specific geographic area. To the extent that property values do increase, the city may use those new tax dollars to retire its debt on that investment.

TIF areas have expiration dates. Other taxing entities are barred from collecting taxes on the increased value, if any, until the expiration of the TIF area.

PREMISE: Cities are severely limited in how rapidly they can grow their revenues, which are based largely on the assessed value of properties within the city limits. Cities have no control over assessments and their revenues are capped by annual growth limits. Thus, tax increment financing is one way to make ambitious, if speculative, investments in the future without waiting for growth.

But TIF-ability is an asset that must be carefully used and its benefits must be calculable. The Gahan administration has been irresponsible in that respect and has used the T.I.F. function more like a piggy bank or a blue-sky wish list. Current officials won’t be around when the bills have to be paid.

PROPOSAL: I’ll conduct an immediate audit of our T.I.F. programs and will publicly report to the citizens of New Albany the whos, whats, whens, whys, and wheres regarding them.

---

I haven't asked Democratic mayoral candidate David White yet, but I strongly suspect his view of TIF programs and the abusive tendencies of their local application corresponds with the preceding. However, I can state with certainty that White fully understands the challenge to future municipal solvency posed by serial TIF misuse. He'd rather face up to it than kick the can further down the high-maintenance-cost road.

As an aside, I cannot recall a time when 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps girded up to disagree with current Anchor Office occupant Jeff Gahan's addiction to TIF areas as de facto credit cards intended to be pumped dry so as to enable bright shiny "piggy bank" and "blue sky" wish lists, while leaving the burden of debt management to be left for our grandchildren.

Yesterday I spoke of the no-gimmicks Strong Towns platform as a "third way" for New Albany.

+ Stop valuing efficiency and start valuing resilience;
+ Stop betting our futures on huge, irreversible projects, and taking small, incremental steps and iterating based on what we learn;
+ Stop fearing change and start embracing a process of continuous adaptation;
+ Stop building our world based on abstract theories, and start building it based on how our places actually work and what our neighbors actually need today;
+ Stop obsessing about future growth and start obsessing about our current finances.

For more about TIF's positives and negatives, read this article from the Strong Towns Knowledge Base. It's also worth contemplating this: How much of Gahan's pay-to-play campaign finance enhancement would be possible without the gravy generated by TIF projects? He may be corrupt, but he's no fool when it comes to undercover math.

Your Questions Answered: Is TIF Always Bad? by Jacob Moses

 ... This week’s question: Is TIF always bad?

Tax increment financing (TIF) is a financing method used by local governments, often to redevelop blighted or disinvested areas where market-rate development is seen as unprofitable without assistance. Under a TIF agreement, a local government incentivizes a developer to work in a designated geographic area (called a TIF district) by subsidizing a portion of the development costs. The subsidy may help pay the up-front cost of either private development or associated public infrastructure. The city raises the money by selling bonds to investors, and the bonds are gradually paid back out of increased property taxes over the next 20 or 30 years.

As redevelopment causes the value of the property to increase, more property taxes can be collected from within the TIF district. Rather than adding these to the city’s general budget, any additional tax revenues above the amount paid at the time the TIF was established are set aside in a special fund. That fund is reserved for gradually paying back the initial TIF bonds. Once the TIF is paid off, local governments can use the future property taxes for anything—road maintenance, schools, etc.

Questions to ask, and alternatives to be considered.

The intention behind TIF is not always bad—but here is a list of questions you can ask yourself or your elected officials to discover if TIF is best for your city’s or town’s financial health.

Have you considered incremental development?
Incremental development means making small bets on many small projects over a broad area over a long period of time. Because local governments don’t have the ability to guarantee the future success of a project, they should consider growing incrementally.

Instead of constructing a rail line, you start with a shuttle bus; instead of building an apartment complex, you start with a duplex.

This same philosophy applies to TIF districts, which are often used to jump-start large scale redevelopment projects, and justified on the basis that no such mega-project would have been viable without TIF. But should the city first consider a smaller investment to develop the area? Could they invest in helping the existing local grocery meet its needs? Could they practice economic gardening and seek to help hardworking, entrepreneurial residents of the area start and grow companies? Could they make sidewalk and traffic-calming improvements that improve street safety and make a business district more walkable and lively?

What would it take to gradually bring up the value of existing properties instead of doing full-scale redevelopment?

We know these alternative solutions aren’t as shiny and new as the proposed, TIF-funded megaproject. However, because they are small bets, local governments can preserve their resilience if they don’t succeed.

Is the public losing anything?
Before local government can approve a project for TIF, they must ensure the project passes the “but for” test: but for the TIF subsidy, the development wouldn’t happen.

If that’s true, then the TIF is jumpstarting development but the public isn’t losing anything, because the money to pay off the initial TIF subsidy is coming from property taxes that otherwise wouldn’t have been collected at all.

The problem, however, is that it’s challenging to actually assess that “but for” test in practice, meaning lots of projects that get TIF money probably don’t pass it. That means TIF can end up starving the local government’s general fund—which pays for most city services—because the property taxes are going to the TIF district instead.

Before approving projects for TIF, it’s essential that local governments—to the best of their ability—ensure that the TIF money is going to truly necessary, value-creating projects that can’t happen any other way, and not to subsidize development that could have been achieved by another means.

Truth, facts, non-Disney real things: “Again and again, when we look at streets oriented toward people we find that they are more economically productive than any other style of development.”

The intro.

As we wrap up another year here at Strong Towns, we’re going to use the next two weeks to highlight some of the best content we published in 2018. We want to make sure these great pieces come to your attention—whether you missed them the first time around, discover something new in them on a second read, or think of somebody you’d love to share them with.

Our goal is to change the conversation about growth, development, and community prosperity in every city and town in North America. That means giving you, the members of the Strong Towns movement, the tools to have better conversations with your friends, colleagues, and local officials about what makes for a productive place.

One key attribute that financially productive and resilient places tend to have in common is walkability. Walkable places are places that are built to the human scale: where a person on foot feels not only safe, but comfortable and inclined to linger. These are the places where life happens, and it shows when you #DoTheMath: walkable places foster more economic activity and deliver a better return on investment, square foot for square foot, than places designed around motor vehicles.

The reprise:

Best of 2018: Why Walkable Streets are More Economically Productive, by Rachel Quednau (Strong Towns)

What is the value of a street where people can walk safely? Why build streets that are constructed with the needs of people in mind, not just the needs of cars?

Many people concerned with pedestrian safety and "walkability" care about these issues because they feel that walking is good exercise or that walkable places are more attractive or that walking is better for the environment than driving.

These are all valid arguments and may convince some of those reading this article that walkability is important. But what I want to talk about today isn’t an argument based on values or aesthetics. It’s an argument based on pure dollars and cents — one that should convince people with a myriad of values and political leanings that people-oriented places must be a priority if we want our communities to be economically prosperous.

Again and again, when we look at streets oriented toward people — that is, streets where walking is safe and enjoyable, that people are drawn to visit on foot, and where fast and extensive car traffic is not the #1 priority — we find that they are more economically productive than any other style of development. This is particularly true when we compare people-oriented places to car-oriented places—think of that stretch of your town that effectively does everything possible to discourage walking and biking, including a street with multiple wide lanes to ensure fast car movement, acres of parking, and minimal (if any) sidewalks, bike lanes and crosswalks.

Walkable streets, on the other hand, encourage business activity, generate greater tax revenue per acre and offer a higher return on investment than auto-oriented streets ...

Hello Wendy, Part Two: "Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale."

Gibberish, isn't it?

Previously: Hello Wendy, Part One: In which we are properly warned not to heed the oligarchs' call to discount the value of liberal arts degrees.

As originally published on May 18, 2017, this column explains why I feel this need to say hello to Wendy Dant Chesser, the president and CEO of One Southern Indiana ... and why I have no plans to "let it go" anytime soon.

Note also that many of the same thoughts were repeated a few weeks later, prior to the council's annual rote approval of One Southern Indiana's tithing request.

(2 of 2) My comments at tonight's city council meeting, during public speaking time prior to A-17-02 (funding for One Southern Indiana).

---

ON THE AVENUES: Are dissidents born or made? A humanities major examines his life and locale. 

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

Since my mother died in mid-March, I’ve experienced periods of intense introspection.

Are these signs of depression?

Maybe, although I don’t think so. In all likelihood, periods of reflection are natural manifestations of the grieving process. The cosmos can be disorienting even in the best of times, and our reactions change with them.

I believe that it’s never too late to learn something, and accordingly, these past few weeks have struck me as an opportunity to relax and see where these evolving thoughts are leading.

One very big question has moved to the front of the cerebral queue. It’s something I’ve often asked myself through the years.

Why am I here?

Mind you, not here on Planet Earth. There’s no need for existential musing about the nature of origins, at least yet. I’m perfectly content to allow theologians, philosophers and even humanities majors to earn their meager pay, but looking through old photo albums is evidence enough for me.

My parents met, and one thing led to another. Suddenly there I was, all created, pouring pints of Guinness for a living and plotting a beer revolution.

Rather …

Why am I still here, continuing to live in New Albany when I might be residing in another part of the state, country or world?

(Reader’s note: The axiom known as Thrasher’s Razor fully applies to this rumination, because now more than ever, we’re all here because we’re not all there.)

As the missus reminds me on widely scattered occasions -- basically, every morning at breakfast -- I’ve never been much in sync with the sort of polite poseur’s society mores craved by the likes of Bob Caesar. They're far too banal an ordeal for me.

After 57 years of give and take, it’s evident that I have lots of buttons – and the reigning poltroons have even more fingers. I’ve never been able to swim a lick unless it’s against the metaphorical tide. Contrarianism fits me like a well-tailored suit, which of course I’d refuse to wear, because you can’t trust anyone who does.

They’re just hiding behind those fashionable costumes (seriously?), anyway.

I trust it isn’t time to face the final curtain, and yet the years dwindle down. Wouldn’t I be happier elsewhere, in a place with a cultural climate more in keeping with my personal value system, as opposed to one that prompts severe allergic (read: aesthetic) reactions?

Might I manage to find the zip code for peace and harmony, even at the advanced age of “I can remember the first moon landing”?

Haven’t “they” always told me to leave town if I didn’t like “their” toxic farrago of ignorance and anti-intellectualism?

To which I’ve always succinctly replied: “You first, my dear Gaston.”

---

The most recent resurgence of these locational culture reflections came during our April visit to Portland, Maine.

It was a Friday morning at the estimable Tony’s Donut Shop at the corner of Bolton and Congress, and we were equipped with cream horns, black coffee and the bakery’s gnarled regulars seated at an adjacent table, talking current events.

As noted previously, Tony's is somewhat reminiscent of New Albany’s venerable Honey Creme Donuts, albeit three or four times larger, with more production capacity as well as a half-dozen cozy tables for visitors to sit and converse.

It was impossible to avoid overhearing the amiable patter as locals came and went with their carry-outs, nor to ignore the booming voices of the senior citizens seated nearby. They were talking hockey when we sat down, then shifted to politics -- and I caught myself cringing involuntarily, as though expecting to be savagely beaten.

After all, back home again in Indiana, where I’ve insisted on remaining amid the raging right-wing proclivities, this conversational shift inevitably would have segued into the parroting of conservative talk radio bromides.

Or, just the thing inspiring me to respond loudly from the left side of the aisle, a scenario usually culminating in rancor, disharmony and “if you don’t love it, lump it” -- or worse.

And so there I sat at Tony’s Donuts like Pavlov’s drooling mutt, conditioned to imagine a fine day about to be ruined, all the while thinking that I can’t seem to escape the mentality of Redevelopment Commission meetings no matter how far I travel – except this time, it wasn’t that way at all.

Instead, these retirees in Portland fiercely criticized Donald Trump’s buffoonery. They mercilessly ridiculed the Republican Party, and scoffed openly at the very idea of a theocratic creature called “Mike Pence” reposing within spitting distance of power.

Me? I’m from Chicago. Never heard of Indiana.

Awestruck, yet aware it would have been impolite of me to kiss these strangers, I settled for stuffing another nut-encrusted Bismarck into my gratified pie hole. Still, it started me thinking.

I’ve lived in Floyd County my whole life, and in the city of New Albany during the latter half of it. Even when Barack Obama won the state of Indiana in 2008, John McCain beat Obama more than comfortably in both my county and city. So did Mitt Romney in 2012, and of course Trump easily carried them, too.

Yes, so-called Democrats have “controlled” municipal government for much of the same period, although it is painfully clear that the retirees at Tony’s would take one pained look at Caesar and accurately place him somewhere to the right of George Wallace.

Back to my original question. If I’ve never been into S & M, why have I punished myself these many decades?

As an old-school Red (Commie) marooned in a new-age Red (Conservative) sandbox, and generally outnumbered, I’ve been compelled for thirty-five or more years to inflict my liberalism on the prevailing Falangist orthodoxy by means of guerrilla warfare, destined almost always to lose, and just as often reluctant to compromise.

Why am I like this?

I don’t know. After I’m dead, the psychoanalysts can study my brain for causes of contrarianism. In my experience, it’s incurable.

All I know is for as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with the notion that opposing points of view deserve a hearing, especially as they pertain to politics, civil rights, religion and individual conscience.

The bland respectability of Babbitt-style conformity invariably tramples “other” competing sides of the story, and so when disposed to tilt, my windmill of choice flies a banner reading “we’ve always done it this way.”

On the other hand, if I’ve been of assistance just once to someone by helping them see that it’s okay to be different, and it’s possible to be responsible, productive and ethical without being duped and hornswoggled by delusions, fantasias and superstitions foisted by the usual suspects, then my career in contrarianism has been well worth it.

---

As a relevant postscript, I cannot attend Thursday evening’s city council meeting owing to a conflict with my Leadership Southern Indiana graduation ceremony. As you may recall, I’m a proud member of the Discover class of 2017.

Leadership Southern Indiana’s mission is to engage, develop and mobilize regional leaders who will serve and transform our community.

Ironically, the council’s Thursday evening agenda includes A-17-02, an ordinance documenting our legislative body’s annual tithe to One Southern Indiana – and coincidentally, 1Si’s President and CEO, Wendy Dant Chesser, spoke to my class last week during our concluding Community Leadership Day.

Ostensibly Dant Chesser was there to outline steps for effectively leading a non-profit organization, and this she managed to do with requisite efficiency.

However, the second half of her presentation quickly digressed into the customary advertisement for 1Si, although this time with a novel twist.

According to Dant Chesser, the large manufacturing conglomerates most eagerly courted by 1Si (as opposed to independent local businesses and grassroots entrepreneurs, who must settle for trickle-down) prefer employees holding one of the six “top earner” university degrees, including engineering, computers and electronics.

However, according to her PowerPoint slide, higher education insists on disgorging twice as many graduates who’ve been awarded the six least “useful” (and lowest paying) degree choices: English, philosophy, history and the like.

It would seem that both Dant Chesser and the fluffed and subsidized multinational beneficiaries of the neoliberal order, upon whom 1Si depends to make payroll for 14 staffers, are offended by this ratio.

She made no effort to conceal her disdain for those viewing education as anything other than glorified vocational training, and considering the fact that I wasn’t the only humanities major in the room, her summarizing anecdote of choice was tellingly errant.

Dant Chesser told us of her recent chat with an art history major who was having trouble in the job market. Well, what did he expect? Art history? What sort of guidance counselor would recommend studying subjects as perennially useless as art history?

Well …

Perhaps those guidance counselors grasping that the object of education isn’t always to match obedient hamsters to their proper wheel, but to produce humans capable of thinking. The fact that “fake” news is such a concern these days might enter into this paradigm, wouldn’t you … think?

Seemingly nowhere in Dant Chesser’s narrowly defined (read: confined) world exists the type of broad, individually tailored choices of human aspiration that depart from economic development of the “we’ve always done it this way” variety, which by breathtaking coincidence is the type best calculated to advance the specific capitalist format to which 1Si has attached itself like a leech – hence the blood money of its council funding request.

The real problem might be that humanities majors have been made aware of different trends in the history of thought, and as such, they’re the ones most likely to question Dant Chesser’s premises.

Which I did, aloud and joyfully.

Bizarrely, another of her slides testified to the critical importance of every Southern Indiana resident meekly accepting 1Si’s version of the Regional Cities Initiative, so as to provide unanimity in pursuit of a “collective” path forward – and yes, “collective” is precisely the word this crony capitalist enabler used.

Irony is dead, but Trumpolini didn’t kill it.

As a direct result of past concerns proffered by anti-establishment dissidents, at least the money 1Si is requesting of our council will be put to a specific, directed use: WorkHub, a workforce training initiative.

That’s all well and good, but is this workforce training available to art history majors, or must we collectively denounce the pursuit of non-vocational education before disbursing the dollars to applicants?

Until Dant Chesser answers this question (a contrite public apology would be more suitable, but I’m a cynical realist), I recommend to council that the money be withheld. It won’t, and I can hear the backslapping already.

This admittedly has been a long read, so thanks for persevering.

You know, if dastardly parasitic humanities majors like me didn’t combat the angst with alcohol and stick around places like Nawbany, confident that any reasonable definition of leadership includes transparency, the ability to hear opposing viewpoints, to weigh available options and to filter the incessant bilge before charging across open ground toward the machine gun nest – tell me, would anyone bother challenging Wendy Dant Chesser and Bob Caesar when they begin spinning those “our way or the highway” whoppers?

That’s okay. You needn't answer. It’s my conscience, and it’s not for sale. However, I’m not going anywhere, and you can buy me a beer any time you like.