Transportation for America has unveiled their three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy.

Transportation for America has unveiled the organization's three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy. The three principles are as applicable in New Albany as anywhere else. Candidates, your thoughts?

1 Prioritize maintenance
2 Design for safety over speed
3 Connect people to jobs and services

Check it out.

A New Vision for Transportation (Smart Growth America)

Listen Up, Washington: No New Roads (Charles Marohn at Strong Towns)

---

A VISION FOR 21ST CENTURY TRANSPORTATION IN AMERICA
Yesterday our colleagues at Transportation for America unveiled their three new principles and outcomes for federal transportation policy. That may sound pretty wonky, but taken together, they paint a vision for what the tens of billions we spend on transportation each year should actually accomplish for people. Instead of just talking about how much money to spend, these principles delve into how we can better spend the money we already have.

The principles are worth exploring in their entirety—which you can do here, with some great, shareable graphics—but here's why we're really excited about them: they will help create safer, more walkable communities.

Principle #1: Prioritize maintenance
Outcome #1: Cut the road, bridge, and transit maintenance backlog in half

Principle #2: Design for safety over speed
Outcome #2: Save lives with slower, safer road design

Principle #3: Connect people to jobs and services
Outcome #3: Determine how well the transportation system connects people to jobs and services, and prioritize projects that will improve those connections.

Why these principles matter for Complete Streets

Our work at the National Complete Streets Coalition is all about making sure that everyone who uses our public streets can do so safely, and the second principle—design for safety over speed—speaks directly to that. In far too many communities, maximizing the speed at which vehicles travel is the primary motivation behind street design; too often, safe accommodations for people walking, biking, or using transit are afterthoughts, if they're even considered at all. While politicians and agencies talk a big game about prioritizing safety, in practice, it's really just talk. Pedestrians are being killed by people driving at rates not seen in nearly three decades.

If we had a federal transportation policy that explicitly prioritized safety above everything else, our streets and communities would start to look different. Slip lanes in developed areas might be replaced with bulb outs. Extra wide lanes for cars would be narrowed to slow vehicles, making more space for people.

Sidewalks and slow speed lanes for modes likes bikes and scooters would be the norm, not the exception. Once you leave the interstate, streets would be designed to slow traffic—and protect people—instead of speeding vehicles through places to the detriment of safety for all people who use the street.

And principle three is just as important. Complete Streets, and ultimately complete networks, enable people to reach jobs, schools, grocery stores, and many other resources using whatever mode of travel they choose or rely upon. Using new data, we can better assess whether people can get where they need to go on foot or with a bike or via transit. These data can and should help us prioritize the projects that fill in gaps and missing connections in our network. By measuring what matters, then using those data to guide our decisions and investments, we can create safer, more accessible, thriving communities.

More topics local candidates don't talk about: Shifting from building MORE infrastructure to making BETTER use of what we already have.

As usual, Marohn locates the center of the target. One important question voters should be asking the Gahanites: Exactly how are we going to pay future maintenance costs for all these bright, shiny (and in so many instances, unnecessary) objects?

The Strong Towns Approach to Public Investment, by Charles Marohn (Strong Towns)

We’re done building infrastructure. The idea that any city in North America will, in the future, have appreciably more roads or streets, more sidewalks and curbs, more pipes or pumps or valves or meters, is absurd. Some may add a bit here or there, but for the most part we’re done. What we’ve built is what we’ve got. That’s it.

In fact, I suspect that many cities will have less infrastructure in a decade than they do now. Two decades from now, I suspect contraction of infrastructure will be a common and shared experience across our cities.

This means that the task of city-building must shift dramatically, from building more to making better use of what we already have. For over seven decades, we’ve culturally viewed expansion as our pathway to success. Now we must develop strategies for thickening up our places, for going back and wringing more return out of the trillions in existing investment.

An Obsession with Maintenance
In my book, Strong Towns: A Bottom-Up Revolution to Rebuild American Prosperity, I outline how local governments must use two complementary – but very different – approaches for making capital investments: maintenance and little bets ...

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: The public housing resident, the gas leak, and another Duggins NAHA mishap. Time for a change?

Last week the Green Mouse received a call from a resident of the New Albany Housing Authority. She's had heart surgery in the past, and grapples with persistent health worries.

At some point after breakfast she noticed the smell of natural gas. Worried, at 10:00 a.m. she called NAHA's maintenance department to report the odor. Two hours passed without a return call or visit; she went outside (fortunately it was a temperate weather day) and after conferring with her son, called the fire department.

Finally around 1:00 p.m., three hours later, maintenance arrived and determined there was a gas leak in the vicinity of her water heater.

Apparently the employee answering the phone that morning in maintenance decided a potential gas leak wasn't important and could wait until after lunch.

Referencing the NBC News report linked here, the Mouse can only ponder whether the installation of carbon monoxide detectors is something David Duggins might contemplate for his fiefdom (as a side note, all of NAHA's upper managers were out of town at a meeting during the incident the Mouse recounts).

Maybe that's an insider job -- WINK WINK -- for a Gahan-appointed NAHA board member, sycophant and frequent donor Terry Ginkins. Those 2019 mandatory tithes are coming due, anyway.

But at the very least, perhaps a tad more training for the folks answering the phone?

Carbon monoxide is killing public housing residents, but HUD doesn't require detectors, by Suzy Khimm and Laura Strickler (NBC News)

Residents of a South Carolina public housing complex are demanding answers after two of their neighbors died from the gas.

... None of the apartments had carbon monoxide detectors, local authorities found. In fact, public housing is not required to have them under federal law: While all rental housing subsidized by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must have smoke detectors, the federal government does not have the same requirement for carbon monoxide detectors.

NBC News has found 11 deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning in HUD housing since 2003, based on local news reports.

Public housing residents are particularly vulnerable to carbon monoxide. High levels of the gas are more likely to harm the very young and the very old, and most of the 4.6 million families receiving HUD rental assistance are elderly, disabled or families with young children. Acute exposure to the gas can cause permanent brain damage, among other long-term health problems, and at high levels it can kill in minutes.

Queue the cattle cars, because Riverview Tower will be the next pawn in City Hall's luxury enhancement crusade.

Satire alert: Trump tells Gahan,
"I can fix your Riverview Tower problem."

It's another underachieving puff piece by Chris Morris, who someday might consider ASKING some of those questions referenced in the banner, although if he did, journalism might break out — and then what?

Can we be honest? The Jeffersonville newspaper as currently constituted displays no interest in what lies beneath the Team Gahan's public machinations.

Morris invariably accepts what he's told by people with whom he's schmoozed for decades. In terms of information, it's a closed loop. The newspaper should be comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable; instead, it hoists a series of feel-good stories amid just enough Pavlovian click bait (crime and drugs and roundabouts, oh my!) to juice its advertisers -- which include THE CITY OF NEW ALBANY.

Meanwhile, Jeff Gahan is far more concerned with affixing blame to decapitated predecessors for Riverview's deteriorating condition than manning up to own the crisis sparked by his own ill-considered hostile takeover of public housing.

Gahan's is the least transparent mayor in the city's history, but when it comes to greed, his intent cannot be disguised.

If Riverview Tower is doomed owing to irreparable physical problems, then residents can be scattered for their own good (as Gauleiter Duggins ineptly signaled to the inattentive reporter, below). The building would come down, and then the property sold for for the sort of "luxury" high-rise development that's eternally more conducive to the engorged mayoral ego than any conceivable dose of Viagra.

It's "why he's here," forever fascinated by those bright shiny baubles capable of generating campaign funds, as opposed to actual human beings and their needs, which he simply cannot fathom in a month of Sundays.

By the way, hasn't Duggins long since shed the "interim" prefix?

It's a permanent, stupefyingly overpaid position at this point ... well, at least until January of 2020, when a new mayor graciously will allow Duggins to seek his panacea of a comfy sinecure in the private sector, and the next in a series of dismally failed career moves.

Questions still surround Riverview Tower in New Albany, by Chris Morris

 .. David Duggins, interim director of the New Albany Housing Authority, said Riverview is currently being serviced by a temporary electrical system. He said it would cost $4 million-plus to make a permanent fix and redesign the electrical system. So far NAHA, its insurance company and the Housing and Urban Development Department have spent $600,000 for repairs and other costs associated with the building.

He said decisions will have to be made down the road on the building's future.

"Everything is working and it's safe. We have an electrical contractor walk through the building twice a week," he said. "But it's not a permanent fix. The system dates back to the 1970s. We need to look and made decisions moving forward on what is best for our residents."

Duggins said he plans on meeting with each Riverview resident one-on-one beginning early next year to discuss their situation and see what fits them best. There are 160 units at Riverview but right now around 35 are vacant.

"We want to be more involved and help families make decisions ... let them know the services NAHA provides and other housing options," he said ...

 ... Duggins said there are some residents at Riverview who likely would be better off living in an assisted living facility which they would be eligible for with a Medicaid waiver. He said he has tried to show them what housing choices are available in the community.

"We have kept them informed with everything going on here," he said. "Our main focus has always been the residents, most of whom are elderly, to make sure they are taken care of and to educate them on all the services they have available to them."

ON THE AVENUES: If this is adulting, I’d rather be leaving on a jet plane.

ON THE AVENUES: If this is adulting, I’d rather be leaving on a jet plane.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

"Humankind cannot bear very much reality."
— T.S. Eliot

In the context of human history, as hundreds of millions of our species lived and died with very few elective choices apart from doing whatever was necessary to survive long enough to procreate, “adulting” as a concept could only have been recently formulated by youthful residents of the richest impoverished country this planet has yet seen.

Adulting is the assumption of tasks, responsibilities and behaviors traditionally associated with normal grown-up life, along with the implication that the individual in question does not particularly identify as an adult and that acting as one does not come naturally.

This said, “adulting” is a popular inside joke at the Confidential household. As the missus puts it, “Every time we look around at the house and see something in need of repair, we get right to adulting by booking a trip to Europe.”

Not like it’s a bad thing, mind you, but the majority of yurt dwellers in Mongolia have known for decades about my utter hopelessness as a household handyman, having spent my formative childhood years reading books and listening to music, and only grudgingly participating in my father’s manly pursuits like tools, grilling, guns and barbed wire fence maintenance.

Even minor details of domicile upkeep interest me little, and I seek to evade them. Fortunately my life partner is considerably more adept, perhaps because she's from Maine. Diana is willing to study YouTube videos and follow instructions. Meanwhile, forever the critic, I’m busy complaining about the absence of an appropriate soundtrack or the video's poor picture quality.

Last week our dryer’s drum stopped turning, and I was the one to shrug; after all, clotheslines are good, too. She already was taking it apart, finding the snapped belt, ordering a replacement on-line, and viewing video instructions for what proved to be a relatively quick fix.

In short, she triumphantly adulted that nasty dryer, and consequently we didn’t go to Belgium or buy a new one. I congratulated her profusely and trundled off to return the clothesline to where it had been used previously, artfully securing the gutters to the garage.

Or was it the muffler to my car?

This brings us to the squirrel in the upholstery on the third floor, which is a finished space, albeit not air conditioned. We don’t go up there very much during the hot weather months, and apparently neither did the squirrels, who’d been frolicking in the narrow space above the drywall this past spring.

Their summertime absence led me to surmise that my inspired purchase of a Popeil Ultrasonic Pest Repeller last April actually had worked as billed, although the truth is they probably gnawed through the power cord within days of installation. Either that or tuned their guitars by the frequency.

Now with the return of cooler weather last week, the pitter-patter of Tree Rat feet could once again be heard above the ceiling and beneath the roof, and with it the suggestion that it was my turn to merrily go adulting by doing something about whatever portals these varmints were using to gain access.

This involved the painful task of finding a roofer, which I somehow managed to do, but in the interim on Wednesday night before he could come, Diana heard a series of crashes emanating from the 3rd floor. Upon closer examination, a squirrel had found his way into the room and wreaked havoc.

The door had been shut, and either the squirrel had exited as he entered, or was still there somewhere. Returning home, I went to investigate and could not locate the perpetrator. Drawers were opened, nooks illuminated and crannies scoured, and still no squirrel. I reinforced two potential rodent egress points, and went to bed.

It did not occur to me the squirrel might be hiding inside the couch, as opposed to underneath it, and as I was vacuuming yesterday, out he leaped. Scampering away, he must have stepped on the remote, because the television set suddenly came on -- to a Cialis ad.

From what I’ve heard, squirrels hereabouts have been doing nicely without artificial stimulation.

Brow furrowed, it occurred to me that squirrels eat to live, and I live to eat. Armed with this helpful knowledge, I went to the kitchen for peanuts; having eaten my fill, a handful traveled back up the stairs, where I made a munchable path from couch to window. The screen was removed, and I retired to the other side of the room to wait.

Ten minutes later the squirrel was perched on the window ledge, twenty feet away, taking his sweet time to finish one final delicious welfare peanut before disappearing outside.

Probably his feet were what we heard again this morning above the bedroom, but the roofer’s coming today to look for pathways and patch them. I hope it works out, because this adulting thing is absolutely exhausting, if for no other reason than Microsoft Word’s determination to change every single mention of “adulting” herein to “adulating.”

Stop it. Just stop it. There is no adulation in adulting, at least until the plane leaves the gate.

---

I’ve been following the Tribune and the Blogs; nothing really changes does it? New Albany always did suffer from intellectual constipation and it is fun to watch and listen. It’s amazing how a well placed comment/question/barb can upset the thought process and/or equilibrium of the powerettes that rule. It’s a hoot!

Eleven years ago, I received a lovely e-mail from a retired New Albany native living in New Mexico. Having resolved to move back home in 2008, he had started reading NA Confidential and wanted to tell me how much he enjoyed the blog -- and craved beer like he used to drink when stationed in Scotland.

This is how I made the acquaintance of Don Eckert, who left the city of his birth around 1958 to spend 26 years in the Navy, afterwards working for various military contractors. He and his wife eventually decided to remain in Alamogordo. This was fine, because we’d struck up a regular correspondence by this time.

So, it looks as if, at the earliest, I’ll be returning next spring and will drop by for a pint. Served room temp, not frozen please. I like to taste my beer.

Don proved to be a left-of-center kind of guy, and he was a folksy, capable writer with stories galore. It was a nostalgic to me. How long had it been since I had a pen pal, someone I wouldn’t recognize if we met on the street, but who enjoyed exchanging notes and observations? Don was just this sort, and we generated dozens, surely hundreds of e-mails over the years since.

As I sit here listening and watching on YouTube an assortment of "Flash Mob" pieces filmed in various locales, I again am reminded that if in an introspective moment you discover you're possessed of just a bit of an "Old Soul", then you need to hie off to Europe. And, regardless of current politics and national insanity it is mandatory that one must imbibe and listen. I'm too old and hobbled, but you're prime to give it a go.

I'm in a mood, thanks for listening.

Earlier this summer, Don’s e-mails suddenly became more frequent. At 78, he’d been diagnosed with cancer, and started writing to family members, explaining his chemotherapy, passing the time in treatment and griping good-naturedly about all and sundry. I was flattered and gratified to be copied on these electronic letters.

I was also extremely worried.

His most recent e-mail arrived during the first week of August, still optimistic overall, except with a darker edge. My pen pal’s angst seemingly had less to do with his uncertain medical condition than the foul mood of the country he served.

Didn’t these squabbling factions (all of them, on all sides) realize they were suffocating democracy?

Probably said too much already. Gotta go.

Indeed, it was the last time Don Eckert wrote, because he died on September 1. Two weeks ago I realized how long it had been since I heard from him, and just couldn’t bring myself to search for confirmation. This morning I took a deep breath, adulted, and found the obituary.

It wasn't a surprise. Still, I'm crestfallen.

Loved your “Turkey-Day” missive; well, maybe missile is a bit more appropriate. If you were to think of the Pilgrims, their trans-Atlantic skedaddle, the jumping atop the rock, and the rape-loot-pillage of the indigenous people, from the perspective of someone looking west from Plymouth, you’d have to come to the conclusion that they, the Pilgrims, weren’t looking for the freedom to worship as they please. Rather, they were looking for the freedom to dictate to others how to worship as they, the Pilgrims, believed. The English were fortunate to get rid of those bigots; the Dutch grew tired of them and the Native Americans certainly didn’t need them.

Enjoy your brew; as for me, I’ll be looking for a good Porter when I finally get back to NA. I’m not a beer sophisticate; I just know what I like.

Farewell to Don, who evidently never made it back to NA. We didn't once meet, and I already miss him a hell of a lot.

When the time comes and I finally get where I'm going, perhaps Don and I can still hoist a pint of (celestial) Plain.

Obituary

---

Recent columns:

September 20: ON THE AVENUES: Fighting the power with ballots, not bullets.

September 11: ON THE AVENUES: After 49 years, two more reasons to be an Oakland A's fan.

September 9: ON THE AVENUES: May, Kennedy, wigs and prayers, but where's the delightful infidel gardening column?

August 30: ON THE AVENUES: From Baltic to Mediterranean, the diary of an unrepentant New Albanian Europhile.

"10 Steps to Fix a City," including axing anyone on staff who believes the fixes are unworkable.

Imagine you attend a meeting of City Council, the Redevelopment Commission or the Board of Public Works and Safety, and as you're sitting there, expecting the same ol' same ol', an elected representative or appointed official begins explaining what he or she read at Strong Towns.

It's an old link, one worth viewing again.

It's also a list for comparing platforms in 2019. I've included explanations for some, though not all of the precepts. Give the website a click, and by doing so, pole vault to the head of the queue.

---

10 STEPS TO FIX A CITY, by Andrew Burleson (Strong Towns)

1. Don't issue any new bonds until the city's current debts are fully paid off.

2. Don't accept unfunded maintenance obligations.

3. Throw out your parking ordinances.

No parking ordinance is better than no parking ordinances. Allow on-street parking everywhere, and use parking meters as needed to limit on-street congestion in high-demand areas. Let the market figure out the off-street supply and demand balance.

4. Don't permit greenfield development when existing infrastructure is highly underutilized.

Almost every city has a section of town with streets and sewers surrounded by vacant lots or abandoned buildings. As long as there are big chunks of your town like this, there’s no reason to issue building permits for new infrastructure. 

5. Require buildings to front the street.

That means no parking lots in front of buildings. The ground floor has to be inhabitable, parking can be beside or behind the building, but there has to be a “front door” that lets pedestrians enter the building directly from the street / sidewalk. 

6. Dramatically simplify your zoning.

First, just throw out your entire zoning ordinance because it’s surely horrible. Then try replacing it with just four zones: Heavy Industrial, Mixed-Use, Restricted Residential, and Restricted Agricultural / Natural. Read more about zoning.

7. Dramatically simplify your traffic hierarchy.

8. Stop building stroads.

In fact, it would be ideal if you could stop building any new roads until we, as a nation, came up with a better system for funding them. 

9. Set a maximum block perimeter of 2000' and enforce it.

10. Fire anyone on staff who believes the above is unworkable.

In today’s municipal world the professionals are a big part of the problem. There are plenty of good people out there who could work well within the constraints above. If the people in your city staff don’t think that’s possible, then the city needs new staff.

Fake facts and disgraceful behavior: Jeff Gahan faced opposition to his public housing putsch, so now he's seeking to discredit NAHA with propaganda.

Breathtaking propaganda, borne of Jeff Gahan's ongoing housing authority property grab.

Has he yet spoken with a single resident?

NAHA Maintenance Issues Brought to Attention of Mayor

Infuriated with those who have had the temerity to question Gahan's trumpsterian assault on public housing, Gahan's dim-pire is striking back with leering grins and innuendo.

Perhaps being compelled to forego the State Senate race is making Deaf all intemperate.

Notice that the press release begins with a triumphant listing of recent measures taken to absorb and demolish the NAHA, such as Gahan's refusal to appoint members to the housing authority's board until he could pack it with drooling sycophants loyal to Gahan (and for that matter, Adam Dickey).

Only then are a handful of photos posted, purporting to depict maintenance issues that probably stem from what was, in effect, Gahan's months-long refusal to cooperate with NAHA's own timetables for maintenance and unit replacement. Reduce them to penury, then attack them for being poor.

Can someone -- anyone -- explain to us how Gahan is a Democrat?

Of course, the only transparent act Gahan's ever committed is doing whatever he can contrive to discredit former NAHA director Bob Lane, which is the best reason for us to surmise that Lane's fighting back since Gahan's handpicked board of servile, bootlicking toadies fired him on Deaf's direct orders.

Typically, by doing so Gahan is slurring every last employee of the housing authority, higher or lower -- but nothing new there for a man whose reputation among ordinary city workers resembles that of Captain Queeg.

Wow.

How much lower can Gahan sink?