In a brazen pre-election ploy, Gahan commits city to $1,000,000 in additional fire department salaries by the year 2023.

Hmm. Does it say anywhere how we go about paying the added firefighters and first responders once the grant is used instead to beautify a street in front of an appointed board member’s business?

"It does make clear that we have to pick up 25% of the first year and then a higher percentage each of the next three, at which point we will have obligated ourselves to about a million dollars a year for additional firefighters. But that's for the next mayor to worry about," wrote the Bookseller in reply.

"November 31st is the last day to apply, according to the Gahan team,"he then added.

"Bodes well for a third term and is indicative of the team's always-keen attention to detail." 🤥

New Albany to hire additional firefighters with $2.5 million grant, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May's Cabin)

NEW ALBANY — With the help of a federal safety grant, the City of New Albany will soon have more firefighters and first responders available to serve the community.

The city recently received a $2.5 million “Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response" (SAFER) grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that will help the New Albany Fire Department to increase its staff through direct funding. New Albany is one of about 300 communities across the U.S. to receive the grant ...

"Firehouses old and new."

Ahrens J. Fox maintains a Fb page called "Firehouses old and new." I asked him to tell me more about his project, and he did. As I explained to him, I'm not a devotee of firefighting culture, but history and architecture interest me, especially the repurposing aspect. The photo above was borrowed from the library.

Best of luck to Ahrens, and I'll continue eavesdropping.

Firehouses old and new

I am a retired volunteer fire fighter of 14 years locally. My interest was to follow my dream somehow, then after my illness in 2013, with all my spare time looking at other pages, commenting and sharing, I decided to make my own page. Well, my page is called Firehouses old and new, started in 2013 to document the history of our local fire stations, throughout Floyd County and other counties here in Indiana, to keep the History alive. As you know, historic buildings don't always last. Some are fixed up and re-purposed, most are either torn down or falling down and gone forever. I even managed to cross the bridge into Kentucky and photographed some there, also. I then added my Facebook friends, and they added or told theirs, and my page exploded with many members. At last count it was 4,000+. These member's are either firefighters both local and abroad, historians, and Fire Dept. buffs.

Elections are for losers: Malysz subs for Gahan at NAACP forum.

NAACP meeting bullet points: Firefighter hiring, housing strategies, who didn't show up, and who did.

NAACP members question employment standards during forum in New Albany; Gahan criticized for not attending meeting, by Daniel Suddeath ('Bama Radio and the Big Pop-Up)

Though city, county and state officials attended, members of the New Albany chapter of the NAACP used the bulk of their questions to ask about New Albany issues ...

... (Mayor Jeff) Gahan wasn’t present for the forum, and that drew some critical remarks from a few of those in attendance. New Albany resident and NAACP member Marcia Booker said there have been instances of city fire department and street department workers not following employee guidelines, and that the issue “has been brought to the mayor’s attention” without a resolution.

“It’s like he promises he’s going to correct a situation, but nothing ever happens,” said Booker of Gahan, who entered office Jan. 1.

For those who persist in thinking that Doug England no longer serves as mayor, the chutzpah-laced symbolism of the following is instructive:

Community Housing Initiatives Director Carl Malysz attended the meeting on behalf of Gahan, and wrote down a list of questions and comments including those made by Toran and Booker that he said he would present to the mayor ...

Having weathered the transition from England to Gahan, tipped the troglodytes into apoplexy, and resumed attending meetings as official agent of the ruler, surely Carl's up for a new, more descriptive title. We like this one: Keeper of the Compromising Photos.

Three hats withering to one?

Amid the five-days-of-Christmas religious advertisements being featured in the newspaper this week, there was space for another wave of incoming mayor Jeff Gahan's appointments.

Gahan names Knight police chief, among appointments ... Juliot will stay fire chief; more announcements coming next week, by Daniel Suddeath

Sherri Knight will be the next New Albany Police Chief, as her promotion was one of three appointments announced by Mayor-elect Jeff Gahan on Thursday.

Gahan confirmed Matt Juliot will retain his position as New Albany Fire Chief. He also announced that Scott Wood will be promoted to New Albany City Plan Commission Director from his current slot as Assistant Director and Zoning Officer.

Knight will replace Todd Bailey — who was appointed by Mayor Doug England in 2010 — as NAPD chief effective Jan. 1.

Speaking for myself, it's too bad to see Todd Bailey depart; as terms go, "modern" and "police" need not be contradictory. Meanwhile, Harold J. Adams of the C-J takes the story a wee bit further.

Among other appointments announced by Gahan, Scott Wood has been promoted to director for the New Albany City Plan Commission where he has served as assistant director over the past four years. That’s a position that had been held by current deputy mayor Carl Malysz under outgoing mayor Doug England. It was not clear Thursday whether Malysz would have a role in the Gahan administration.

In the city clerk's on-line directory these past four years, Malysz has been listed three times: Once as Deputy Mayor, and twice as Director of Community Development, the latter under both Redevelopment and the Plan Commission. City Hall consistently has pointed out that the deputy mayor/body double position was intended as  "ceremonial," without power and sans pay. The reporter Suddeath explained it in this city council preview from November 18, 2010: England: New Albany City Council should not cut salaries; Mayor says Malysz saves city $20k a year

The deputy mayor’s salary is comprised of about $40,000 in plan commission money, about $40,000 from Economic Development Income Tax proceeds and about $5,000 from redevelopment commission funds.

 ... Earlier this week, Coffey said a deputy mayor should not make more than the mayor. The 2008 ordinance that set the deputy mayor’s salary also raised the mayor’s annual pay by $11,000 to $75,000.

It also established a $43,000 a year salary for the director of city operations, a position that has not been held since John Wilcox stepped down shortly after England took office. The position has not been funded by the council the past two years.

Matt Denison is paid $35,000 a year for his role as Assistant Director of Operations ...

At the city council meeting of November 18, 2010, CM Dan Coffey introduced a largely symbolic resolution to gut both Malysz's and city attorney Shane Gibson's pay packets.

R-10-41 A Resolution To Cap Certain Salaries of Appointed City Officials Coffey and Hiring Freeze ... Mr. Coffey moved for the reading R-10-41, Mr. Price second, the vote did not pass with six no votes and 3 aye votes.

Although NAC covered the meeting, which will be remembered primarily as the culmination of Steve Price's fit of pique against historic preservation (Briscoe Declares for Aunt Bee), I cannot recall who cast the third vote in favor of Coffey's resolution.

All of which points to these questions: With Gahan having stated that there'll be no deputy mayor in his administration, will Wood's elevation have the effect of depriving the soon-to-be-former deputy mayor of a revenue stream? Will the director of city operations be funded, and if so, who will serve? What happens to Denison?

And: Can't Gahan just grab some some more unguarded federal money from neighborhood stabilization and give all of us a few hundred bucks for a Christmas shopping spree at Big Lots?

New Albany Firefighters endorsements.

New Albany Professional Firefighters Legislative Committee Endorsements (left to right): Ben Fee, Greg Phipps, Jeff Gahan, Tonye Rutherford, Samuel Heavrin.

(Cribbed from Facebook)

Tribune editorial board signs names, troglodytes remain anonymous.

The Tribune editorial board speaks ...

TRIBUNE EDITORIAL: Support safety even at a tough cost

Grant the mayor his request. Use some of the EDIT money for public safety this year and next. Then, when the city does annex, if the extra tax base does not cover the two budgets, then look at layoffs or cutbacks.

... and so do the anonymous character assassins.

No, we are dealing with a group of lazy, fat cops who only care about themselves.

When you have an opinion like that, small wonder you hide. Anyone for a classic Thursday night on the horizon? We may want to rent the video equipment for this one, wear our furry Ceausescu issue caps, and pretend we're in the Carpathians ... except that pastrami hails from Bessarabia.

ESNA neighborhood cleanup photos.

Submitted by Greg Roberts and ESNA.

Fire insurance marks, privatization and being careful which savior you wish for.

Welcome to the jungle, Matt.

New Albany fire chief wonders what no overtime in 2009 will bring, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune).

The City Council passed it, now New Albany Fire Department Chief Matt Juliot has to live with it.

No money is appropriated for overtime pay in the department beginning Jan. 1, the result of budget cuts approved by the council …

… Juliot said losing the option of overtime may mean cutting service.

“At this point in time, I don’t know what else to do,” he said.

I don’t, either, but perhaps it’s time to humor the Kool-Aid drinkers in the Norquist camp and privatize the lot -- a complete and all-encompassing imposition of user fees on all the services people expect from government but wish not to pay for ... if by "paying" we mean taxes, and running the insulting risk that my money might be used by someone I don't like very much.

Never mind that the reverse might be true. Hypocrisy needn't make sense.

It’s even worse now owing to the economic malaise, but even in better times, we've seen voters pleading poverty, both in terms of cash and in the larger sense of communal insensibility, and opting for devotion to candidates like 3rd district councilman Steve Price, who vows to drown all government in the bathtub, and whose legislative agenda achieves the desired end of starving local authority of the resources to function – all in the name of the downtrodden, who simply can't deal with reality without assistance.

The question remains whether Price and his ilk really are helping this segment of the population.

At any rate, because local government continues to be populated largely by elected officials whose ambitions are indiscernible from the ward heeler’s bare minimum, and who won’t or can’t comprehend the notion of supporting reasonable efforts to make the pie bigger for everyone through paying periodic attention to good ideas about economic development proposed by trained and educated pointy-heads who can't be trusted by people who don't customarily read past the funny pages, budget cuts are duly made amid a heroic cacophony of nickel-and-dime political grandstanding.

As correctly identified by Chief Juliot, the inevitable result of this endlessly corrosive cycle of mandated legislative impotence is the slashing of services, which leads us to that most delicious of junctures, as the people so loudly demanding ever smaller government now must explain the prioritizing of resources made necessary by their refusal to pay a few dollars more – and bitching until the cows come home when the ambulance doesn’t show up all time.

Have they considered the re-privatization of fire services, and the re-establishment of fire insurance marking? Wikipedia helpfully explains the way it used to be.

Fire Insurance Marks
Fire insurance marks were lead or copper plaques embossed with the sign of the insurance company, and placed on the front of the insured building as a guide to the insurance company's fire brigade. They are common in the older areas of Britain's and America's cities and larger towns. They were used on the eighteenth and nineteenth century in the days before municipal fire services were formed. The UK marks are called 'Fire insurance plaques' the first to use the mark was the Sun Fire Office before 1700.

American Fire Marks
Fire Insurance has over 200 years of history in America. Famous fires include the Chicago fire of 1871 and the San Francisco of 1906. The early fire marks of Benjamin Franklin's time can still be seen on some Philadelphia buildings as well as in other older American cities. Subscribers paid fire fighting companies in advance for fire protection and in exchange would receive a fire mark to attach to their building. The payments for the fire marks supported the fire fighting companies. If the protected building were to suffer a fire only their fire fighting company would attend the call to extinguish the fire. Even if competitor fire companies were closer to the fire they would not do anything to prevent further damage or extinguish the fire. This caused bad public relations for the fire mark system. Municipal and rural fire departments support by local taxation became a more logical solution.

Here and now, in the contemporary Norquistian era of rampant selfishness disguised as reasoned doctrine, and where no one wants to pay for anything except their half-dozen weekly trips to Wally World, it looks like we’re back to old way of doing things, Mafioso-cum-protection style, to wit:

Need a fire put out, or a cop to come take the gun away from your meth-crazed stepson? Well, we sure hope you're taken the necessary advance steps to procure service contracts and insurance. Otherwise, we can't help you ... and anyone who can remember what a civilized society resembled, you may wish to pack enough heat to keep the wolves at bay until the monthly check clears.

And guess who will be hurt the most by such a system of non-governance?

The very same downtrodden people who Steve Price says he’s trying to protect from the 21st century. In an irony-free zone, neither he nor they are likely ever to awaken and figure that part out.

"Why don't we get this two or three years ago?"

The City Council argued about the still unresolved fire department hiring ordinance again Monday night.

The Mayor finally took control on Tuesday; with the Board of Public Works passing its own hiring resolution.

The media has been all over it.

Where was 3rd district uncouncilman Steve Price in that mix?

Wondering what was going on, as usual.

As of Monday night’s meeting, Price made it clear he didn’t know. He didn’t know that the Council had been considering the ordinance for the majority of his reign of error. He didn't remember without prompting that he was part of the hold up; having earlier voted against the ordinance his colleagues had developed after months of work and suggested revisions.

He did, however, use his cluelessness as an excuse to cheap shot progress in the form of a spiteful, completely irrelevant jab at Scribner Place, a battle he lost in July of 2005.

That’s what some of us call a triple double and it’s worthy of replay.

*Apologies for the shaky video. Tripod-less videography while laughing is difficult. Make sure your volume is up.

Three cheers for the king

Like everyone else in the city, Mayor James Garner has had to spend an inordinant amount of time trying to circumvent a disinterested, dysfunctional City Council. Yesterday, he did so admirably in moving to resolve the firefighter hiring situation. My only complaint is that it took him as long as it did.

While I haven't always agreed with Garner, no one who's been paying attention for the past few years could disagree with his most recent statement that the Council has created "a mockery of the democratic process", casually and consistently ignoring whichever laws apply to their actions and allowing irrelevant personal disputes to overcome professional responsibility.

To be sure, fingers will be pointed, lawyers will be consulted, and nary a grandstanding opportunity will be missed. Through it all, though, no one on the Council will be able to offer a rational explanation beyond their own collective incompetence as to why the firefighter hiring situation has gone unresolved since being presented to them in late 2005.

That's because there isn't one.

Keep that in mind as they and others line up to testify about the evils of the executive branch.

Firefighters' hiring plan OK'd: New Albany mayor defies City Council by Dick Kaukas, The Courier-Journal

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

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

----

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

Congratulations. You’re the new volunteer fire brigade.

Hell, we have to start somewhere, right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Readers may recall this excerpt from my January manifesto:

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

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

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

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

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

So be it. See you in May.