2017 Minority Health Town Hall Meeting is this Wednesday (October 4) at St. Marks from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

I've just become aware of this town hall meeting about minority health issues and legislation, which takes place this Wednesday (October 4) at St. Marks United Church of Christ, 222 E. Spring Street in New Albany. It's from 5:30 - 7:00 p.m., and you are welcome to attend.

It is my understanding that State Representative Ed Clere has been on the board of the the Indiana Minority Health Coalition for several years. To be honest, I don't know very much about the organization itself.

Indiana Minority Health Coalition history

In 1992, local minority health coalitions throughout Indiana were inspired to start addressing the health disparities among Indiana residents. With the help of the Indiana Black Legislative Caucus, they collaborated to develop the first 5-year Minority Health Strategic Plan for Indiana. As a result, these local coalitions were able to create the Indiana Minority Health Coalition to facilitate the adoption of the strategic plan as it passed through the legislative process. The general consensus among the leadership was that the Minority Health Initiative needed one statewide entity that could serve as a focal point and a unified voice for the local coalitions' concerns. Thus, IMHC was legally incorporated in 1994.

In recent months the IMHC has been organizing these town halls throughout the state, and Rep. Clere arranged one to occur here, even though we don't have an IMHC affiliate (Community Action of Southern Indiana is acting as surrogate in this instance).

IMHC's work during previous town hall swings has included educating about coverage under the Affordable Care Act and advocating for Medicaid expansion.

Our mission

“To enhance the quality of life through education, advocacy, and quality health care services for racial/ethnic minorities. To conduct research and training, develop policy, and create and maintain a broad-based network of affiliate agencies.”

Wednesday's town hall meeting might be a first step toward finding an IMHC affiliate here. I'm planning on attending.

Anyone else?

Pleasant Ridge in the NYT: All that nice outside money waiting to be invested, and all those low-income people refusing to get out of the way.

If you live in New Albany, you're advised to pay close attention to the ongoing saga of Pleasant Ridge, a neighborhood in Charlestown, which has been covered in some depth by both the News and Tribune (links below) and the Courier-Journal. On February 11, the story reached the New York Times.

Many of these same themes are playing out right here as Jeff Gahan seeks to remove affordable public housing -- and many of you are looking the other way, quietly pleased that someone finally is "cleaning up The Project" without stopping to consider the nature of the tactics, and without realizing that these tactics, once deemed acceptable, needn't stop with public housing residents who are in the way of big money.

Gahan considers himself a model Democrat (Clintonian sub-species), while Charlestown's mayor Bob Hall at least dispenses with Gahan's hypocrisy by embracing his inner Republican. Apart for disdain for the poor, apparently they have one other signal trait in common.

"Mr. Hall did not respond to requests for an interview."

Familiar, isn't it?

The NYT article is broken into three "teaser" sections.

Where a City Sees Decay, Neighbors Fight to Save a Community, by Monica Davey (New York Times)

 On Friday, residents who hope to save Pleasant Ridge filed a request for a preliminary injunction in state court, aided by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public interest law firm that sees what is happening here as a troubling new way for a city, in essence, to clear land.

“What’s very unusual about this is using code enforcement to circumvent eminent domain law,” said Jeff Rowes, a lawyer in the case, which asks a judge to stop the city. “And we’re worried about this becoming a model — the model for how to replace housing for people of modest means in states everywhere that have passed limits on the powers of eminent domain.”

SNIP

Michael Gillenwater, the city attorney, says what is happening in Pleasant Ridge, where a private developer has begun accumulating lots, is all about safety, not wealth ... “We’re not going to ever make a dime on this,” Mr. Gillenwater said. “It’s a matter of helping out the city and the people in the long run. All we’re doing is trying to have safe housing.”

“This is not about rich and poor,” Mr. Gillenwater continued. “When you’ve got the crime, the drugs, animals running about, this is about life and death.”

SNIP

“There’s no question that there are problems,” said Josh Craven, who lives here and is president of a homeowners association that has grown out of this fight. “But the city let this happen over all these years. They allowed the slumlords to come in, to not live up to the property maintenance code. They’ve let this go on so long that you can’t come in now and say, ‘Oh, you have to repair everything now or we’re going to fine you thousands of dollars every day so that you just have to sell to get out from under the debt.’”

February 9
Pleasant Ridge residents pursue court action to stop building code fines from the city of Charlestown, by Danielle Grady (News and Tribune)
Neighborhood Association filed lawsuit in January

January 11
Pleasant Ridge Neighborhood Association sues city of Charlestown over building fines, by Elizabeth Beilman (News and Tribune)
Lawsuit claims several Constitutional rights violated

Must read by Joe Sonka: "Tolling body approves low-income mitigation plan following minimal public comment on report few have seen."

There's a temptation to view this selfishly, in that any help at all given to low-income metro residents might alleviate New Albany's anticipated pass-through problems once tolling begins.

However, we mustn't lose sight of the bigger picture. Put simply, these measures are insufficient, as necessitated by a colossally expensive solution to a problem that didn't exist, and have been contrived just as non-transparently as the boondoggle they pay less than lip service to "mitigate."

Jeff G points to this instance of ROTFLMAO, as reported by Marcus Green at WDRB:

The states promised other steps, such as establishing one “walk-up” center for managing toll accounts on each side of the river; allowing two vehicles to register under a single account; and erecting signs in some poorer neighborhoods showing how to get to toll-free bridges.

But here's the part that should resonate for New Albanians already disturbed by the Gahan administration's disdain for transparency, as relayed by Joe Sonka at Insider Louisville and signposted by the Bookseller (italics ours).

Tolling body approves low-income mitigation plan following minimal public comment on report few have seen

After one minor question and little discussion, the tolling body of the Ohio River Bridges Project today unanimously approved a mitigation plan for low-income and minority commuters who will be disproportionately affected by tolls on two new bridges set to be completed within two years.

The plan — based on a report that was not made public until just before the vote, and only reported on in the media over the last two days — was approved after a single citizen made a public comment on the plan, which she had not yet had the chance to review ...

... (Cathy Hinko of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition) took great issue with the fact that the report was not officially released to the public until just before the tolling body voted to approve it, noting that she had only read about it in the media the day before.

“My comment was made based on a news article,” said Hinko. “So after my comment, I read (the report) and listened to their presentation at the same time to figure out what’s going on. And think about the hundreds of thousands of people that this affects… You had to be very tuned in to even know about this, and it seems important enough for people to have been shown it.”

Hinko also criticized the optics of the meeting, noting that an all-white board was voting on something that will greatly affect minorities, while they made no effort to give those communities access to the meeting so they could give their input.

“They are so out of touch with the whole concept of serving people, that although the only thing on the agenda was how to deliver services to people who they call the ‘E.J. (environmental justice) community,’ they put it out on Westport Road where no one can come,” said Hinko. “They are blind to the optics of even making sure that there was at least one person of color in the room. They don’t even think about convenience for people. They don’t even think about how this report should have been out with people being able to review it earlier, where people had two weeks notice. Where they might have had the meeting at 5:00, at a site where anyone across the river could come.

“That’s how out of touch they are. They don’t even think that way. That’s what makes it so sad.”

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.