Learning nothing from the the Ohio River Bridges Project, INDOT bureaucrats refuse to conduct a formal economic impact study in the run up to Sherman Minton project work.

Japan or Germany could do it in six months.

Well then, screw the state's project team.

Join me in wondering how many of them have any experience owning indie businesses.

As with Gahan's crack team of paper-shufflers, assuredly none do.

Businesses concerned about Sherman Minton Bridge project, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May All of the Time)

NEW ALBANY — As developers consider options for the rehabilitation of the Sherman Minton Bridge, many community members are concerned about how closures and disruption in traffic flow will affect local business.

Southern Indiana business owners and stakeholders met with Sherman Minton Bridge project representatives Wednesday at Wick's Pizza in New Albany to learn about the upcoming bridge renovations and to voice their opinions on proposed plans for closure. The project team has been gathering community feedback as it considers its construction approach ...

snip

 ... the project team is looking at overall community impact as it considers the options, but it is not conducting a formal business study. State Rep. Ed Clere, R-New Albany, said he would like to see a formal assessment of how the bridge closures could disproportionately affect certain business owners, such as a survey of downtown business owners who rely heavily on Louisville customers. He said the impact will vary greatly depending on the type of business.

"[The 2011 closure] was a very sudden thing we couldn't anticipate," he said. "Here, we can anticipate and we obviously are ... but if we are looking at 2011 as an experience, we had businesses who did better as a result of the bridge closure, because to be quite blunt, there were folks who discovered downtown New Albany. They couldn't go to Frankfort Avenue, they couldn't go to Bardstown Road easily, and suddenly they were finding that there were some incredible restaurants and shops in downtown New Albany. There were other businesses that went out of business because of the bridge closures."

Jeffersonville newspaper says Harvest Homecoming is a local treasure of ad revenue. I'd rather study those economic impacts a bit more closely.

Back on August 27, 2014 there was an excellent blog discussion about Harvest Homecoming and economic impacts.

Fear the gorilla: After all, Harvest Homecoming's business plan has never been designed for inclusivity.

When citizens, businesses, or other groups go to the City to ask about using public space and are told they have to get permission from a private, non-elected, non-accountable, third-party, there are obviously issues. Eventually, someone is going to have to push the conversation along via civil disobedience. It would be helpful if the business/property owners most directly impacted would do it en masse. If HH doesn't have to go before the Board of Works to secure the space in front of your building for that time period, then neither do you, right?

The year before that (October 13, 2013), there was this.

Amid the garbage, we contemplate Groundhog Day in New Albany.

The festival takes place because the city allows it to take place, always under Harvest Homecoming's terms of engagement, and with what amounts to infrastructure subsidies for the festival that are not consistently applied throughout the remainder of the year (street department work , police and fire overtime, etc.)

And yet nowhere, neither in an ordinance nor on a granite tablet, is there a law that states Harvest Homecoming must occur in the fashion it does.

Retreating whole decade into the mists of time, to October 14, 2007,  a Tribune guest columnist (no, not me) considered Harvest Homecoming's downtown context.

While thousands from the area descend on downtown New Albany, the location of the event could hardly be any less relevant to most attendees. Sure, Harvest Homecoming is in downtown New Albany, but it’s not of downtown New Albany. People stay in the streets, booths cover the businesses — little attention is paid to the locale. Since Harvest Homecoming fails to effectively tie-in to New Albany’s struggling downtown, why even hold it there at all? Tradition, sure. But the parking is better elsewhere ...

I'm struck by one word in Daniel Robison's 2007 piece, and that's "struggling." Most of us would say this is no longer the case. To be sure, much has been accomplished, but much more remains to be done, and complacency is something to be avoided just as fanatically as Pome-Granate-Rita.

However, one of Robison's observations remains true. Harvest Homecoming is not about downtown, and it cannot be about downtown for so long as the festival's "booth days" business model remains unaltered.

In fact, for all the generally exaggerated numbers quoted to the effect of Harvest Homecoming's economic impact, my guess is that we'll soon reach the tipping point on the graph, although we might be there already.

In short, this is the juncture where Harvest Homecoming's traditional booth model suppresses more overall economic activity downtown than it generates.

At present, the festival and existing businesses must co-exist according to a grid, within a finite amount of space, as designed for one or the other to maximize, but not both. Progress has indeed been made in forging an uneasy compromise, but the overall dynamic remains one of tension.

Up to a point, in perfect weather, the compromises hold (ignoring the plain fact that the board it still tilted toward the primacy of Harvest Homecoming's booth model, not the needs of year-round downtown stakeholders).

But spread this grid over a larger geographical area, so that fest and locals are not in direct competition, and wouldn't the returns be greater for both?

This is exactly why the News and Tribune's mention of 1,000,000 visitors is so mind-numbingly ludicrous. I expect very little from the newspaper's editorial board, which strives always to achieve a certain acme of milquetoast, but in this instance there's an obvious imperative to reward business-as-usual Harvest Homecoming-related advertisers at the slight expense of keeping creative long-term thinking safely sedated and boxed, never to escape the newspaper's beige reality.

There are so many ways the Harvest Homecoming experience could be improved. None are likely to be considered, because it's how we've always done it. As long as the newspaper profits from the status quo, so it will constrain.

OPINION: It's been a great 50 years, Harvest Homecoming

 ... Last year more than 700,000 visitors converged on the downtown during the four booth days, which this year began yesterday.

And with good weather in the forecast for this weekend, that number could grow. Maybe this is the year it tops 1 million visitors.

Harvest Homecoming is truly a local treasure. It’s all about community ...

"Southern Indiana residents brace for impact of upcoming tolls," unless they're at Oligarch Shillworthy Pay Grade.

Source: IndyStar (2013).

“I think over the next couple years or so after we get through the opening and initial shock of the tolls, that tolls are going to receive very little discussion in that the economic benefits that we will be seeing will become the focus of the discussion.”
 -- Uric Dufrene, IU Southeast Vice Chancellor and Oligarch Fellatrix

Good work by Beilman, who opts for the deft touch in depicting tolling's impact on different income groups, and allows Dufrene's salaried (above) detachment to reveal itself.

Southern Indiana residents brace for impact of upcoming tolls, by Elizabeth Beilman (Hanson's Harley Folly) ... Staff Reporter Danielle Grady contributed to this story

 ... Uric Dufrene, executive vice chancellor for academic affairs and finance professor for Indiana University Southeast, said residents will need to make decisions about how to handle the cost of tolls based on their individual circumstances.

(The Clark Memorial Bridge ... along with the Sherman Minton, will remain untolled. The Kennedy, Lincoln, and Lewis and Clark bridges will have tolls)

“There, I think consumers or individual households can balance the cost of the tolls versus the benefits of time and distance,” Dufrene said.

Here's the inconvenient flip side, one you'll seldom hear Dufrene (or Kerry Stemler) address.

 ... people living in low-income areas, defined by one-person households with less than $10,830 in annual income in 2010, will bear a disproportionately high effect of tolls.

Phil Ellis, executive director of Community Action of Southern Indiana, hears from the low-income residents served by the nonprofit organization that tolls will hit them hard. CASI provides assistance to people for costs like utilities, but they won’t be able to help with tolls since no federal program provides funding for this cost.

“They’re going to have to sacrifice something in order to pay that toll,” Ellis said. “That might be a decrease in groceries, that could be not being able to pay their full utility bills ... Something’s going to be left unpaid, to be honest with you.”

Somewhere between $40 and $80 a month may not seem significant when weighed against the overall economic impact on the region in the years to come.

“But for the immediate need of individuals with low income, they’ll be the last to benefit from any type of economic boom or anything of that nature, because most of them don’t have the education or skills to be eligible or qualified to have one of those [new] jobs ...

“You’re talking a person where $80 could feed them for a week, could feed their family for a week,” Ellis said. “That’s major.”

2014 edition: Some nagging Harvest Homecoming questions -- asked and never answered.

As a preface to Harvest Homecoming's 2014 invasion later this week, here are a few questions. They were first asked in 2012, and repeated last year.

Judging from today's Facebook discussion, we'll still be asking these questions in 2034. The chat was far too broad to summarize, so go read it at the point of origin.

Some of the themes are repeated here. Consider it to be an evolving worksheet. Harvest Homecoming as yet remains an entity fully capable of being reformed to bring it into line with current realities, but unless the discussion actually begins, there can be no solutions. The city's ducking and covering absolutely fits the WWII definition of chickenshit: Something so useless that it doesn't even approach the level of bullshit.

In the coming days, I'll be reprinting several past essays about Harvest Homecoming. As always, thanks for reading them. After all, it's about the ideas. It isn't about me, as hard as it is for some to grasp.

---

For the Board of Public Works: Ostensibly, you are charged with managing the city’s properties, which customarily include our streets and sidewalks. The traditional Harvest Homecoming festival business model is utterly reliant on being granted permission to charge booths a fee for temporary street set-up space, which continues to have the consequence of blocking the entrances of businesses that operate year-round – and there are far more of these year-round businesses now than in the past, when the festival’s business model originally was developed. Harvest Homecoming’s grudging compromise solution in recent years has been to give existing businesses a first chance to purchase booth space for $300, and using the purchased space to function as de facto entry to their own front doors.

How does the Board of Public Works justify this practice of compelling year-round businesses to pay for entry into their own buildings? Is there a statutory precedent for this practice sufficient to dissuade legal action? Is this something the Board intends to address when it arises, and not before?

New for 2014: Last year I observed a Harvest Homecoming official telling a person that he could not pass out handbills on Pearl Street during booth days, and only those paying for booth space could do so -- from their booths, not on public property. Why does the city sanction this mockery of free speech? 

For Harvest Homecoming: Is there a credible and contemporary economic impact study, one conducted since revitalization commenced in earnest downtown, charting the festival’s oft-stated belief that its presence is a boon for the area in which it is held? Such an impact study must seek to document where the money spent during the festival actually goes, and if there is benefit or detriment to existing businesses, which are forced to alter their modes of operation to suit the needs of the festival or in some cases, shut down entirely.

If there is not such a study, how can such positive economic impact claims possibly be verified?

For the city’s elected officials: It should be obvious by now that the economic interests of our 365-days-a-year revitalizing downtown business district clash violently with the traditional Harvest Homecoming business model, which was devised during a time when downtown was in decline. This clash can only get worse without some form of intervention, especially with a wave of downtown residential properties about to come on line.

While it is clear that numerous people come to the city’s center each year during the festival’s run, it is far from clear whether their presence is a helpful thing for those existing businesses that have invested heavily in their own business models. Isn’t it the city’s job to help answer the questions I’m asking here? Isn’t it the city’s job to arbitrate and mediate the ongoing conflicts of interest? After all, each year the city approves the festival’s increasingly outdated business model. It needn’t proffer approval without active participation in discussions and exercised aimed at greater festival transparency and a more inclusive approach.

Can you say something? Anything? Just a few gurgling noises?

Those gurgling sounds -- they're chickenshit, aren't they?

Today's truthful moment: "Bridge tolls will devastate Indiana businesses, owner says."

Kerry's in that castle, somewhere.

Mike, of course we both know that the bridges junta recognized this fact from the very beginning, which is why those earnest efforts we all made, again and again, to have Kerry Stemler and his sycophants sign off on an economic impact study for local businesses was mocked, ignored and buried beneath the Eisenhower-era verbiage -- and we were ignored because we're not the kind of esteemed, engorged business fetishists that Kerry and his ilk can get their rocks off to (and rake in a few stray bucks while smoking the inevitable post-$-coital ciggies), which is to say, we're not the big-picture, River Ridge besuited kingpins.

And then there's Ron Grooms, who said and did nothing until nothing could be done or said, and only at a dog-won't-hunt point far beyond tactical usefulness finally opened his eyes to the issues and heroically spoke out to mostly empty rooms. Posterity won't be kind. Meanwhile, the rest of us search for survival strategies.

Bridge tolls will devastate Indiana businesses, owner says, by Charlie White (CJ)

A longtime Southern Indiana businessman told Indiana officials during a Tuesday public hearing for the Ohio River Bridges Project that businesses in western Clark County will be "devastated" by the addition of tolls on Interstate 65.

Mike Kapfhammer, co-owner of Rocky's Sub Pub and Buckhead Mountain Grill on Riverside Drive in Jeffersonville, estimated that 40 percent to 50 percent of his customers cross the river from Kentucky without paying a toll. He doesn't believe many will buy toll transponders if they only travel to the Hoosier state for dining or shopping ...

In 2013, some Harvest Homecoming questions -- asked, but not answered.

As a preface to Harvest Homecoming's 2013 invasion, here are the follow-up questions we asked last year (October 16, 2012). At the time, we called it an evolving worksheet, noted that the event remains something capable of being reformed to bring it into line with current realities, and pointed out that unless the discussion actually begins, there can be no solution.  

A year has passed. Have any of these questions been answered? 

In the coming days, I'll be reprinting several essays about Harvest Homecoming. As always, thanks for reading. 

---

For city government and the police department: Can there be clear and public clarification of the open container laws, or absence thereof? Those of us who did our level best to comply with ATC regulations governing alcoholic beverages being carried in and out of our licensed space continue to find it disconcerting that there is inconsistent open container enforcement, if any at all. If this state of affairs owes to ambiguities in state law, I’m happy to take the case to higher authorities. If it owes to local indifference, then we have accidents just waiting to happen during Harvest Homecoming.

For the Board of Public Works: You are charged with managing the city’s properties, which customarily include our streets and sidewalks. The traditional Harvest Homecoming festival business model is reliant on being granted permission to charge booths a fee for temporary street set-up space, which has had the consequence of blocking the entrances of businesses that operate year-round – and there are far more of these now than in the past, when the festival’s business model was developed. Harvest Homecoming’s grudging compromise solution in recent years has been to give existing businesses a first chance to purchase booth space for $300, and using the purchased space to function as de facto entry to their front doors. How does the Board of Public Works justify this practice of compelling year-round businesses to pay for entry into their own buildings? Is there a statutory precedent for this practice sufficient to dissuade legal action? Is this something the Board intends to address when it arises, and not before?

For Harvest Homecoming: Is there a credible economic impact study, one conducted since revitalization commenced in earnest downtown, charting the festival’s belief that its presence is a boon for the area in which it is held? Such an impact study must seek to document where the money spent during the festival actually goes, and if there is benefit or detriment to existing businesses, which are forced to alter their modes of operation to suit the needs of the festival. If there is not such a study, how can such positive economic impact claims possibly be verified?

For the city’s elected officials: It should be obvious by now that the economic interests of our 365-days-a-year revitalizing downtown business district clash with the traditional Harvest Homecoming business model, which was devised during a time when downtown was in decline. This clash can only get worse without some form of intervention. While it is clear that numerous people come to the city’s center each year during the festival’s run, it is far from clear whether their presence is a good thing for those existing businesses that have invested heavily in their own business models. Isn’t it the city’s job to help answer the questions I’m asking here? Isn’t it the city’s job to arbitrate and mediate the ongoing conflicts of interest? After all, each year the city approves the festival’s increasingly outdated business model. It needn’t proffer approval without active participation in discussions and exercised aimed at greater festival transparency and a more inclusive approach.

Tolling fetishist Kerry Stemler riffs on Nixon: "Fuck the doomed."

Considering the manner by which Kerry Stemler's Oligarchic Benevolent Society rammed tolling up the community's collective bunghole sans lube, believing anything might change in the attitude of the area's overlords has less chance of fruition than a tooth fairy's visit to your dentured grandfather.

Merely note that only now, with the boondoggle underway, comes ephemeral (and entirely phantom) "concern" on the part of the leading element over the economic impact of tolling, whereas the economic impact study on small business given lip service by certain bridges junta members two years ago has ... wait for it ... never, ever materialized. Never even been mentioned since then. Done gone and disappeared, not unlike the credibility of the junta's membership.

From New Albany's perspective, a platoon of cloned Einsteins aren't necessary to gauge the likely impact of tolling, whether pertaining to low-income and minority users or higher-income majority users. The bridge with no tolls (Sherman Minton) will become the chosen means to give tolls a miss, with the likely consequence of rendering the city's already indefensible one-way streets into choked non-arteries filled with pass-throughs, whose only objective is traveling elsewhere.

And yet still there is no plan for adapting the street grid to fast approaching realities. Instead, we seem intent on spending money on every other conceivable "lifestyle" project except the chief means of accessing them.

New Albany's never been a paragon of priorities, but really?

First of two open houses held on tolling, by Braden Lammers (N and T)

Residents again came out to voice their opinions at a meeting to collect public comments on the Ohio River Bridges Project, but few believe anything will change.

More than 120 people attended the public open house held to gather comments on the economic impacts of tolling for the bridges project on low-income and minority users.

"Can you have revitalization, reinvestment, renewal without some level of gentrification?"

Shared streets, shared neighborhoods. Food for thought.

Moving On From Gentrification to 'Shared Neighborhoods', by Brent Toderian (HuffPost blog)

As the renaissance of cities and urban areas in North America continues, more and more neighborhoods are struggling with the challenges of change. Although the market's rediscovery of inner-city, walkable, mixed-use communities is an excellent thing in many ways, the word "gentrification" inevitably comes up in almost every discussion. But one person's gentrification is another person's revitalization, so the debate is always complex and heated.

Can you have revitalization, reinvestment, renewal without some level of gentrification? Probably not, as any perceived improvement in the eyes of the marketplace changes the economics. I do though, continue to believe that in planning for community change, there are reasonable levels of gentrification, that gentrification can be strategically managed, and that we can have "revitalization without displacement." In fact, this phrase has been the vision for Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) for years.

Plaid Friday 1: Speaking of localism, remember when that paving guy launched his boycott of toll opponents?

Last week, an unexpected e-mail landed in my box.

Alas, when I followed the link, the request had disappeared. To be honest, it had been a very long time since I thought about Mr. Coe and his boycott. Let's revisit it. It was July, 2011, and the text of the original posting at NA Confidential appears in its entirety. There was a follow-up with Coe's reply: "If you’re going to argue 'no tolls' be fair and honest."

---

At long last, an oligarch's toady who is honest in his vituperation.


All the digging credit goes to Curt Morrison and his Louisville Courant blog for uncovering these delicious gems of wisdom from Spencer Coe, Vice President at Gohmann "We Fought the Guvmint, and the Guvmint Won" Asphalt, which of course stands to reap vast and mind-boggling profits from various components of the bridges boondoggle.

Indiana businesses boycotted by VP of crooked contractor

Spencer B. Coe, the Vice President of Gohmann Asphalt, through comments on a Business First poll on the Bridges Project, has launched a boycott against toll opponents. Specifically, he's named businesses like Buckhead's, Rocky's, Clark County Auto Auction, that he believes he can do without.

Here's a Coe defense of his kneejerk boycott notion, which appeared as a comment at Louisville Courant.

I stand by my position, those who support the ORBP should not support the businesses of those who do not. I can choose where to spend my money and it will not be with businesses that actively oppose investment in the future of our region, I suggest the same for all ORBP supporters.

In the same comment thread, NA Confidential's Jeff Gillenwater answered.

If that's how Coe wants to play, then play.

What that means, of course, is that an overwhelming majority of people in the region would not do business with Gohmann Asphalt, including hundreds of area businesses and all the local governments who have issued statements, signed petitions, and/or passed resolutions against current ORBP plans.

Gohmann competes for local contracts worth hundreds of thousands in New Albany alone. Removing them from the bid list, though, is no problem if that's how their VP wants to handle it.

In an earlier comment at Facebook, Coe widened the geographic scope to include our own charming New Albany.

Please someone tell me how this will adversely affect Southern Indiana? Smooth flowing traffic on I 65 will adversely impact downtown New Albany and Grant Line Road businesses? The inability of some in Southern Indiana to see outside their "back yard" is frightening!

Impact? I'm glad he brought up that word, which has become a favorite of mine. I took a slightly softer approach in answering.

Spencer, what you might do is stand in my shoes for just a moment. As operator of a small independent retail business that does not derive governmental income for massive construction projects, but rather must convince diners/drinkers/shoppers to come to Indiana from Louisville to spend their discretionary income, I know how very hard it is to do just that. They don't have to come here; I must convince them. Charge them a fee to do it, and for many, game over. Until you and other toll proponents truly GET this reality, we'll continue being at odds.

Which reminds me, it is now 205 days since Jerry Finn of the Bridges Authority, in a conversation with me at the Muhammad Ali Center, conceded that no economic impact study on the effects of tolling on Southern Indiana small businesses had been done or even contemplated, but that he would henceforth urge such a study: Tolling Authority "input" session utterly without the redeeming presence of strong liquor.

Has he?

Have they?

Has anyone?

As for Spencer Coe, I'm sure he well understands the potential economic impact on Gohmann Asphalt if the company were to be frozen out of the bidding process for those huge infrastructure projects that constitute its bottom-line bread and butter. Alas, his boycott threat is hollow; Coe suggests "the same for all ORBP supporters," but since statistically, there are a few dozen such supporters at most scattered throughout the metro area, I'm not exactly set aquiver at the prospect of self-immolation on the Public House lawn.

Sadly and predictably, what Coe and other Ohio River Bridges Project proponents cannot seem to fathom, dazzled as they are by Ayn Rand's erotic attraction to steel, concrete, asphalt, and moreover, the velvety feel of crisp green slices paper pressed into one's hand in a One Southern Indiana conference room toilet stall, is that those of us down here in muddy bottom lands, rooting around for stray trickle-backs from the oligarchs, clearly see the economic impact of tolling because we live it, every single day.

We know that an economic impact study would amply illustrate tolling's obvious harm to small business in Southern Indiana, to our working commuters who must travel to Louisville and back, and to those Hoosiers least able to afford tolls, period.

At the same December meeting as my chat with Finn, David Nicklies wagged his finger at me and said that everyone must sacrifice to make possible the saving grace of the ORBP. What I asked him, and what I've continued to ask, is this: Why must residents of Southern Indiana sacrifice far more for less benefit?

It is a question that remains unanswered by Hoosier bridges fetishists, Spencer Coe now prominent among them.

Finn and Caesar get all irate as Southern Indiana (minus compliant NA) continues the struggle against tolling.

As we await the study of the Ohio River Bridges Project's local small business economic impact, promised on that long-ago day by ORBP authority member Jerry Finn (yes, I can have the memory of an elephant when it suits me), with the two-year anniversary of his unfulfilled vow due on December 13 of this very year, it becomes increasingly evident that Clark County has picked up the anti-tolling torch once presciently lit by New Albany's city council during Steve Price's final term, and since dropped by our purportedly more progressive legislative body at the urging of Bob "CeeSaw" Caesar, who remains forever eager to sell more costume jewelry to the delusional minions at One Southern Indiana, where the the equation never changes: If Kerry Stemler + Ed Clere = transportation boondoggle, then let's party like it's 1959, and by the way, if tolling rape is inevitable, can someone please pass the Astroglide?

As usual, expecting consistency of thought from New Albany's city council is tantamount to believing the Cubs will win the World Series, or that Lucy won't yank back the football at the last second, leaving Charlie Brown (and the city) in the mud.

First, the Clarksville Town Council got themselves some lawyers, and now the tourism board has followed suit. Jeffersonville's council just might join them. Shouldn't New Albany get in on the fun?

Tourism board joins Clarksville in suit to stop I-65 bridge tolls (Courier-Journal)

Board members of the Clark-Floyd Counties Convention and Tourism Bureau on Wednesday voted to join Clarksville in a new lawsuit seeking to block the tolling of the Kennedy Bridge and a new Interstate 65 span that is to be built next to it.

Tourism bureau spokesman John Gilkey, who also is president of the Clarksville Town Council, said the board voted to allocate $10,000 — the same amount the town pledged on Monday — for an Indianapolis law firm to take the case.

The Jeffersonville City Council will decide whether the city will join the lawsuit at its next meeting, Dec. 3.

Some Harvest Homecoming questions.

We’ve probably asked these questions before, but while memories are fresh, let’s have another go at them. Consider this my evolving worksheet, and note that the concerns described yesterday have been relayed to the Floyd County Health Department for comment. Also, note that I continue to believe that the event can be reformed to bring it into line with current realities. But unless the discussion begins, there can be no solution.  

For city government and the police department: Can there be clear and public clarification of the open container laws, or absence thereof? Those of us who did our level best to comply with ATC regulations governing alcoholic beverages being carried in and out of our licensed space continue to find it disconcerting that there is inconsistent open container enforcement, if any at all. If this state of affairs owes to ambiguities in state law, I’m happy to take the case to higher authorities. If it owes to local indifference, then we have accidents just waiting to happen during Harvest Homecoming.

For the Board of Public Works: You are charged with managing the city’s properties, which customarily include our streets and sidewalks. The traditional Harvest Homecoming festival business model is reliant on being granted permission to charge booths a fee for temporary street set-up space, which has had the consequence of blocking the entrances of businesses that operate year-round – and there are far more of these now than in the past, when the festival’s business model was developed. Harvest Homecoming’s grudging compromise solution in recent years has been to give existing businesses a first chance to purchase booth space for $300, and using the purchased space to function as de facto entry to their front doors. How does the Board of Public Works justify this practice of compelling year-round businesses to pay for entry into their own buildings? Is there a statutory precedent for this practice sufficient to dissuade legal action? Is this something the Board intends to address when it arises, and not before?

For Harvest Homecoming: Is there a credible economic impact study, one conducted since downtown’s began revitalization, that charts the festival’s belief that its presence is a boon for the area in which it is held? Such an impact study must seek to document where the money spent during the festival actually goes, and if there is benefit or detriment to existing businesses, which are forced to alter their modes of operation to suit the needs of the festival. If there is not such a study, how can such positive economic impact claims possibly be verified?

For the city’s elected officials: It should be obvious by now that the economic interests of our 365-days-a-year revitalizing downtown business district clash with the traditional Harvest Homecoming business model, which was devised during a time when downtown was in decline. This clash can only get worse without some form of intervention. While it is clear that numerous people come to the city’s center each year during the festival’s run, it is far from clear whether their presence is a good thing for those existing businesses that have invested heavily in their own business models. Isn’t it the city’s job to help answer the questions I’m asking here? Isn’t it the city’s job to arbitrate and mediate the ongoing conflicts of interest? After all, each year the city approves the festival’s increasingly outdated business model. It needn’t proffer approval without active participation in discussions and exercised aimed at greater festival transparency and a more inclusive approach.

Small business owner: “Adding tolls on the 65 bridge will wipe me out.”

Travel agent Lynn Rhodea (quoted above) sees the reality of tolling -- and then there's 1Si's interim head, Matt Hall, regrettably touting his organization's disregard for the welfare of Hoosiers:

"Like it or not, we have no choice but to build the bridges."

Hall's sad bit of Stemleresque parroting/parody aside, hearty congratulations to Irv Stumler for his comments (see excerpt below) at Thursday night's public hearing to discuss the recently released "predetermined results courtesy of your nearest oligarch" ORBP economic impact study.

Irv's much appreciated candor should give him something to talk about with "clean and green" partner Jerry Finn at tomorrow's NA beautification day.

Local residents call to stop downtown bridge construction; Integrity of economic impact study questioned, by Braden Lammers (N and T)

Local residents acknowledged the benefit the east-end bridge will provide to the region for the planned Ohio River Bridges Project, but called to stop the construction and the use of tolls on the planned downtown bridge.

The Indiana Department of Transportation and the Indiana Finance Authority held a public hearing Thursday night to present and collect comments on an economic impact study released April 16 ...

... Irv Stumler, former New Albany mayoral candidate and Floyd County resident, pointed to the Louisville-based conservancy group River Fields for adding unnecessary bloat to the project.

“They’re not conservationists, they’re obstructionists,” he said. “I’m a bit upset about the whole process. And I don’t think it’s necessary at this point to build a downtown bridge, especially redoing all of Spaghetti Junction and throwing all of that in and expect Indiana to pay because of what Kentucky should have done years and years ago.”

"Will Your Business Be Affected By Tolling?"

(Submitted by No2BridgeTolls.org)

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Will Your Business Be Affected By Tolling?

Please Attend Economic Impact Public Hearing and Share Your Concerns on Thursday, April 26th

The Indiana Finance Authority (IFA) has received an Economic Impact Study analyzing the impact of using a public-private financial and project-delivery structure for the East End Crossing portion of the proposed Ohio River Bridges Project. Public comments are being accepted online and a public hearing has been scheduled.

For detailed information on the study and the online comment form, visit the Bridges Authority website, www.bridgesauthority.com.

Make sure to attend and comment!

Public hearing on Economic Impact Study:
April 26, 2012, 6:00 p.m.
Sheraton Riverside Hotel
700 W. Riverside Dr. Jeffersonville, IN

Public comments also accepted during the same time via a video feed at:

University of Louisville
Shelby Campus
Founders Union Building, Room 218
9001 Shelbyville Road Louisville, KY

Questions? Please email or call.

Thank You

Paul Fetter
No2bridgetolls.org
(812) 283-5555 Ext 27
paul@clarkcountyaa.com

Udpate on Drummanard Estate

If you read and responded to our last email regarding de-listing the Drummanard Estate--thank you! We are currently awaiting the outcome as the decision date has been pushed back by a few days.

About No2BridgeTolls.org

We are a broad-based coalition of businesses, organizations and private individuals who are opposed to tolls on the I-65 Corridor/Kennedy Bridges System. Our targeted focus has been driven by recent announcements by the governors of both states to shift the financing burden for all of the downtown infrastructure needs to the Kennedy Bridge and its I-65 supporting new Downtown Bridge. We have formed under the entity of "Organization for a Better Southern Indiana, Inc." (OBSI.) Our purpose is to educate the public of the true impact of the current proposed bridge toll on both sides of the river. We are a 501-C6 non-profit organization that has been formed for the purpose of disseminating information. We are not against the bridges--just tolls or user fees on the I-65 Corridor/Kennedy Bridges System, which will divide our community, be a regressive tax that our citizens and businesses cannot afford, and will adversely affect the local economy, disproportionately affecting Southern Indiana.

ORBP video summarizes findings of its Economic Impact Study.

WFPL: "Louisville Participates in Small Business Survey."

It doesn't surprise me, either. Shift happens, after all.

Louisville Participates in Small Business Survey, by Devin Katayama (WFPL)

A new survey has released early results showing the positive economic effects of Louisville’s locally-owned businesses, as opposed to big retail chains, which doesn’t surprise the local business community ...

... Preliminary results for Louisville show what the alliance has always assumed. Nearly $40 of every $100 spent at local businesses stays in the community. The survey compares the local businesses against three large chain stores, including Home Depot, Target and Barnes & Noble. At these chains the community only keeps $14 of every $100.

Tolls: "Somebody would’ve stood up and said, ‘you can’t treat our community this way.’" Ed didn't. Ron didn't. Steve didn't. Kerry didn't. Jerry didn't ...

An extended excerpt is merited. Johnson and Kapfhammer say it out loud, while over at the Clere Channel Network, the crickets chirp.

The business end of the bridges project; Local owners fear traffic changes, but dread tolls, by Braden Lammers (N and T)

FOCUS REMAINS ON TOLLS

“My biggest concern is tolling,” (Jim) Keith said. “I think it just dissects the heart of a community.”

Wes Johnson and Mike Kapfhammer, co-owners of Buckhead Mountain Grill and Rocky’s Sub Pub — both of which are located on Riverside Drive — agreed that tolls were their biggest concern. Both have been proponents of the No 2 Bridge Tolls organization, which opposes tolling on the downtown corridor.

Johnson said there is no question if tolls are installed on the downtown bridges there will be an impact to their restaurants and all Southern Indiana businesses. No approval from the Federal Highway Administration has been returned yet on what structures can and cannot be tolled related to the Ohio River Bridges Project.

“When you finance that bridge with tolls, the majority of that falls on our little community,” Kapfhammer said. “Within two miles here, our little community is going to get hammered.”

Keith said he is worried about what tolling the bridge will do to local tourism by placing a toll on one portion of an interstate that runs from Chicago to Alabama.

“This is the only place the road is tolled,” he said. “It creates an obstacle. I have yet to have anyone tell me, for visitor spending, what is the advantage for tolls,” he said. “I think from an economic development standpoint, it’s going to create a barrier; maybe forever.”

Keith added that tolls will affect the number of people that come to the region for various reasons but choose to stay in Southern Indiana instead of Louisville. He said spill-over from Louisville conventions is often a way in which Southern Indiana hotels fill up their rooms. But with tolls on the bridges, Keith is concerned that those who come into town for conventions will be unwilling to travel back-and-forth across a tolled bridge, stay in Southern Indiana hotels or even patronize restaurants in Jeffersonville and Clarksville.

“They may not choose to leave the state of Kentucky,” he said. “We don’t have any way of countering it.”

There is also a concern that once tolls are installed on the bridges, there will be an unwillingness for many to cross the river for a job. For the metropolitan area, the Indiana side of the river constitutes about 20 percent of the employee pool in the region, Keith said. He is concerned about what businesses will do to attract employees that could get a similar job in Louisville — if they will offer employees extra pay or pay for their tolls. While it was admitted there will likely be a benefit on the east-end, with the development of River Ridge, the expectation is that there will be negative consequences along the downtown corridor.

“I think the bigger fight, for us, is what it does to the people of this community,” Johnson said. “It’s just going to be devastating to this community, there’s just no way around it. What’s getting missed is the stories of the people that live in Clark County where the average wage is $34,000 ... when you put that barrier up there for them, you are going to tax them to death. They will literally not be able to live life the same way.”

He cited a majority of the people that cross the bridge are Indiana residents, who will end up paying the largest portion of the tolls.

“The representation that we were supposed to have ... that were supposed to look out for the best interests of Southern Indiana, failed to look out for the best interests of Southern Indiana,” Johnson said. “If they were looking out for the best interests of Southern Indiana, we wouldn’t be in the spot we’re in. Somebody would’ve stood up and said, ‘you can’t treat our community this way.’ The littlest guy, with the littlest voice gets picked on here, and everyone else is willing to look the other way.”

“It’s shameful,” Kapfhammer said interjecting.

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

The unnecessary downtown segment of the ORBP will have an effect on Jeffersonville not unlike the late Comrade Ceausescu's decision to remake central Bucharest, and with about as much public input into the process.

It continues to astound that this crazy boondoggle of a 1950's era "mobility" project is going to be so obviously bad for people and settlements in Southern Indiana, and in so many different ways, and yet the higher ranking the elected official in Indiana, the more oblivious he is to the "toll" we'll all have to pay, one that extends far beyond "right-to-pay-taxes-to-go-to-work" being enacted to cross infrastructure.

As for those Jeffersonville public officials going on record with their objections, they'd best be very careful. When it comes to the oligopoly's chieftain, Kerry Stemler, whiskey (and dissent) just make him mean.

PART ONE: Studying a concern; Impact of changing traffic patterns among concerns about Bridges Project, by Braden Lammers and David A. Mann (News and Tribune)

As transportation officials race to break ground on the Ohio River Bridges Project, concerns remain on what affect the plan is going to have on local businesses and communities.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: The Bridges Authority has no clothes.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: The Bridges Authority has no clothes.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

I seldom indulge in wholesale reprints, but will do so today in the wake of Monday's triumphal announcement by the Bridges Authority of its preference for tolling rates. This column originally was published in the newspaper on November 18, 2010. Almost 16 months later, there is neither evidence of an economic impact study on Hoosier small business, nor any indication that the idea ever has been broached within the star chambers.  

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
-- Christopher Hitchens

“The future is never more important than to a people on the verge of a cataclysm.”
-- Nathaniel Philbrick

I’m the co-owner of an independent Hoosier small business. Teaching, selling and living better beer are my workday preferences, and admittedly other “minor” details occasionally elude me. However, after two decades in the food and beer business, pristine clarity periodically emerges from the gloaming.

Based on samplings of my experience, permit me to submit the following propositions.

1. We’ve always tended to our Southern Indiana backyards, but as an independent, niche-oriented small business, we’ve found that an aggressive focus on marketing to potential customers in Louisville is necessary for survival and growth.

2. Basic metropolitan area demographics justify this approach. Better beer costs more, but it resonates with a specific (and happily, ever expanding) demographic. Large numbers of our target demographic – higher incomes, better education, more extensive travel and life experience – live in more populous Louisville.

3. Marketing to a Louisville demographic never is easy, owing primarily to ancestral assumptions and clannish prejudices of the sort common along borders. Although those not engaged in bricks and mortar retailing might dismiss such intangibles as apocryphal, they’re far from imaginary to those who actually occupy the independent small business trenches.

4. I’ve accumulated sufficient knowledge about NABC’s consumer base to know that an important segment of it comes from Louisville. I am vindicated by knowing that a plan patiently pursued over a long period of years has proven worthy. Looking around, I can see that we’re not alone, and similar strategies are working for other independent Hoosier small businesses nearby.

5. Tolls on existing Ohio River bridges absolutely would alter this playing field to the detriment of independent Hoosier small businesses. Whether a quarter or $3 each way, the sum would constitute an increase on the price of Hoosier goods and services for Louisville consumers. Hoosiers crossing the Ohio to work would have no choice except to pay tolls (and have less money to spend at home), while Louisvillians would have the option to remain at home and spend discretionary monies in Kentucky.

6. Tolling burdens absolutely are tantamount to the erection of a physical barrier to interstate commerce. Furthermore, it is quite likely that even now, the mere mention of tolling is having a measurable influence on the decision making process of Louisville consumers. Clearly, I can see how tolling will damage my independent Hoosier small business, and I can plausibly infer that it will hurt my brethren just as badly.

Why, then, are Hoosiers acting against the interests of Hoosiers?

---

Numerous Southern Indiana businesses just like mine have done exactly what the reigning experts at organizations like One Southern Indiana endlessly preach at their costly seminars: To gather information, know the customer, plan strategies, and over time, nurture these strategies in pursuit of success.

We’ve all done so, and we’ve all learned from these many years of experience, but suddenly, overnight, what we’ve learned apparently no longer matters. It’s a commandment-level article of 1Si faith that business owners know what’s best for them – except now, when those of among us daring to demand evidence are ignored, muzzled, and dismissed as vitriolic cranks with hidden agendas and Communist leanings.

Most ironic of all: Ever since objections have arisen and evidence has been presented as to why tolls will negatively impact independent Hoosier small businesses, certain tolling advocates with no evidence … who have not spent two decades marketing their businesses as destinations Louisville customers … who are not engaged in bricks and mortar retail … who’ve never, ever been engaged in any semblance of independent small business … haughtily roll their eyes, gazing loftily at the clouds whenever it is suggested that maybe, just maybe, independent Hoosier small business owners actually know perfectly well that tolls on existing bridges will be catastrophic for them, destroying decades of outreach to Kentucky in one, huge $4 billion swoop.

Here’s the rub: You can believe the lessons of my business experience, or you can delete them, but throughout it all, amid high-handed imperiousness and ham-fisted diversionary tactics, not once has the Bridges Authority actually offered answers to these questions, as asked by independent Hoosier small business owners.

No economic impact study has been cited. No outside information has been referenced. Pins drop, crickets chirp, and the Bridges Authority can only mumble mantras about inevitability, accuse sincere questioners of spreading myths, and when rattled, hide behind St. Daniels’ billowing robes.

And so it is my contention, borne of experience, that the imposition of tolls by an unelected body with nary an independent small business owner seated on it will have the undeniably harmful effect of indirectly taxing independent Hoosier small businesses, burdening their Louisville and Greater Kentucky customers price hikes, denying needed sales tax revenue to Indiana, and isolating a sizeable market that we’ve finally come so close to capturing in recent years.

Because the Bridges Authority refuses to answer legitimate questions, we must conclude that as an entity, quasi-evangelical construction zeal is trumping every other human concern, and that independent Hoosier small businesses soon will be expected to meekly surrender, patronizingly receive pat on their heads, ceremoniously bow to their betters, and take the full brunt of the financial hit -- for the greater “good” offered us by 1Si’s gospel of economic elitism and St. Daniels’ future D.C. job prospects.

There’s neither myth nor negativity in any of this, because after all, I have my evidence.

Where on earth is theirs?

REWIND: The Bridges Authority has no clothes (2010).

(From the newspaper, first published on November 18, 2010)

---

BEER MONEY: The Bridges Authority has no clothes.

By ROGER BAYLOR, Local Columnist

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."
-- Christopher Hitchens

“The future is never more important than to a people on the verge of a cataclysm.”
-- Nathaniel Philbrick

I’m the co-owner of an independent Hoosier small business. Teaching, selling and living better beer are my workday preferences, and admittedly other “minor” details occasionally elude me. However, after two decades in the food and beer business, pristine clarity periodically emerges from the gloaming.

Based on samplings of my experience, permit me to submit the following propositions.

1. We’ve always tended to our Southern Indiana backyards, but as an independent, niche-oriented small business, we’ve found that an aggressive focus on marketing to potential customers in Louisville is necessary for survival and growth.

2. Basic metropolitan area demographics justify this approach. Better beer costs more, but it resonates with a specific (and happily, ever expanding) demographic. Large numbers of our target demographic – higher incomes, better education, more extensive travel and life experience – live in more populous Louisville.

3. Marketing to a Louisville demographic never is easy, owing primarily to ancestral assumptions and clannish prejudices of the sort common along borders. Although those not engaged in bricks and mortar retailing might dismiss such intangibles as apocryphal, they’re far from imaginary to those who actually occupy the independent small business trenches.

4. I’ve accumulated sufficient knowledge about NABC’s consumer base to know that an important segment of it comes from Louisville. I am vindicated by knowing that a plan patiently pursued over a long period of years has proven worthy. Looking around, I can see that we’re not alone, and similar strategies are working for other independent Hoosier small businesses nearby.

5. Tolls on existing Ohio River bridges absolutely would alter this playing field to the detriment of independent Hoosier small businesses. Whether a quarter or $3 each way, the sum would constitute an increase on the price of Hoosier goods and services for Louisville consumers. Hoosiers crossing the Ohio to work would have no choice except to pay tolls (and have less money to spend at home), while Louisvillians would have the option to remain at home and spend discretionary monies in Kentucky.

6. Tolling burdens absolutely are tantamount to the erection of a physical barrier to interstate commerce. Furthermore, it is quite likely that even now, the mere mention of tolling is having a measurable influence on the decision making process of Louisville consumers. Clearly, I can see how tolling will damage my independent Hoosier small business, and I can plausibly infer that it will hurt my brethren just as badly.

Why, then, are Hoosiers acting against the interests of Hoosiers?

---

Numerous Southern Indiana businesses just like mine have done exactly what the reigning experts at organizations like One Southern Indiana endlessly preach at their costly seminars: To gather information, know the customer, plan strategies, and over time, nurture these strategies in pursuit of success.

We’ve all done so, and we’ve all learned from these many years of experience, but suddenly, overnight, what we’ve learned apparently no longer matters. It’s a commandment-level article of 1Si faith that business owners know what’s best for them – except now, when those of among us daring to demand evidence are ignored, muzzled, and dismissed as vitriolic cranks with hidden agendas and Communist leanings.

Most ironic of all: Ever since objections have arisen and evidence has been presented as to why tolls will negatively impact independent Hoosier small businesses, certain tolling advocates with no evidence … who have not spent two decades marketing their businesses as destinations Louisville customers … who are not engaged in bricks and mortar retail … who’ve never, ever been engaged in any semblance of independent small business … haughtily roll their eyes, gazing loftily at the clouds whenever it is suggested that maybe, just maybe, independent Hoosier small business owners actually know perfectly well that tolls on existing bridges will be catastrophic for them, destroying decades of outreach to Kentucky in one, huge $4 billion swoop.

Here’s the rub: You can believe the lessons of my business experience, or you can delete them, but throughout it all, amid high-handed imperiousness and ham-fisted diversionary tactics, not once has the Bridges Authority actually offered answers to these questions, as asked by independent Hoosier small business owners.

No economic impact study has been cited. No outside information has been referenced. Pins drop, crickets chirp, and the Bridges Authority can only mumble mantras about inevitability, accuse sincere questioners of spreading myths, and when rattled, hide behind St. Daniels’ billowing robes.

And so it is my contention, borne of experience, that the imposition of tolls by an unelected body with nary an independent small business owner seated on it will have the undeniably harmful effect of indirectly taxing independent Hoosier small businesses, burdening their Louisville and Greater Kentucky customers price hikes, denying needed sales tax revenue to Indiana, and isolating a sizeable market that we’ve finally come so close to capturing in recent years.

Because the Bridges Authority refuses to answer legitimate questions, we must conclude that as an entity, quasi-evangelical construction zeal is trumping every other human concern, and that independent Hoosier small businesses soon will be expected to meekly surrender, patronizingly receive pat on their heads, ceremoniously bow to their betters, and take the full brunt of the financial hit -- for the greater “good” offered us by 1Si’s gospel of economic elitism and St. Daniels’ future D.C. job prospects.

There’s neither myth nor negativity in any of this, because after all, I have my evidence.

Where on earth is theirs?

I always knew the Bridges Politburo had no intention of conducting an economic impact study.

As Matt pointed out on Twitter, publishing this story on a holiday weekend doesn't seem to be the optimal way for the C-J to assure readership. Speaking for myself, I keep remembering the promise that the Bridges Politburo would not neglect the economic impact of tolls on Hoosier small business. The Green Mouse reiterates: Posterity simply is not going to be very kind when it comes to gauging the performance of this body.

Study of Ohio River bridges' impact stalled; Work would include gauging tolls' effect, by Marcus Green (Courier-Journal).

Authority officials are at a loss now to say if the final study will consider the potential impact of tolls on the region’s economy.