"Car-centric policy dominates our legal system and the way police conduct business. And it's not holding people truly responsible."

Lest those of us who aren't employed by the city of New Albany forget:

ON THE AVENUES: For New Albany’s Person of the Year, the timeless words of Mother Jones: “Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.”

I'd accuse City Hall of forgetting about Chloe Allen, although I'd hate to intrude on the image-burnishing and self-referential promotion that fills the languid days for Mayor Gahan's minions.

Yes, I'd accuse City Hall of forgetting about Chloe Allen, but let's be fair. The minions wouldn't even know who I was referring to.

That's how completely out of touch they are.

It's not just an accident, by Nathaniel M. Hood (Strong Towns)

Car-centric policy dominates our legal system and the way police conduct business. And it's not holding people truly responsible.

Hood tells of a horrible and inexcusable "accident" that took place on a shared use path where autos are not even supposed to be.

You guessed it. No charges.

It goes beyond not investigating something that so clearly should have been investigated. More often than not, reckless drivers do not lose their license and stay on the road. And, when a collision does occur and it’s not investigated, insurance laws can make it difficult to prove damage in a civil suit without charges and the dollar amount on damages can be capped.

This is the system we've created; one that favors drivers at nearly every level. It's unfortunate that car culture dominates our system and law enforcement so much that it doesn't hold people responsible. And until it truly does, we're not going to see as much progress as we need. Changes to laws and public mindset must happen in tandem with changes to the design of our streets. We need to reorient our understanding of transportation to value the safety and rights of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit users just as much as drivers.

The top comment to this post reinforces a point we've made previously -- again and again.

With apologies to those who know that I harp on this here and elsewhere, I need to continue pointing out that part of this problem is linguistic. Law enforcement officers automaticaly assign agency to vehicles, which cannot be prosecuted, instead of drivers who can. A car did this, a truck did that. How glorious it must be to operate machines that offer such speed, power, and control, and know that your blunders, no matter how deadly, will always be attributed to the vehicle.

The media then dutifully follow suit. Reporters, who are trained to avoid passive voice, can get very huffy when you challenge them to change "A pedestrian was struck and killed by an SUV" to "A SUV driver struck and killed a pedestrian." They seem to think that active voice wording implies malicious intent or opens them up to a libel suit.

If this premature exoneration annoys you as much as it annoys me, I invite you to start calling it out with the hashtag #DriverNotCar.

Seeds and Greens opens for business, although City Hall wouldn't know it.

Seeds and Greens Natural Market & Deli opened yesterday with a 9:30 a.m. ribbon cutting. I'd estimate the crowd to be 75, perhaps more. State Representative Ed Clere gave a short and appropriate speech, contrasting today's downtown with the situation only a few years ago.

Read about the building housing Seeds and Greens.

First, congratulations and best wishes to the Freiberts, and everyone who helped them put this ball into the air. We'll be shifting a percentage of our shopping to this locally-owned store.

Next, a side note: I'm often criticized for suggesting (and repeating) that the city of New Albany has no discernible economic development plan for downtown. Yesterday, City Hall offered a typically vacuous reply of sorts, because not one of its elected or appointed officials attended the Seeds and Greens opening.

That'll show me, won't it?

The inattentiveness doesn't end there. Zero council persons were spotted, and no political party chairmen or functionaries, though the absence of the latter surely qualifies as a blessing. In fact, Rep. Clere was the only elected official of any sort, unless I missed seeing someone.

City Hall constantly pleads monetary poverty when the subject of downtown economic development arises; the proper time-honored, good-old-boy tools just don't exist outside the industrial park, officials always repeat, indicating they remain mired in the same old abatement and direct subsidy rat trap inhabited by generations of "experts".

Shouldn't it be obvious by now that a chronic absence of creative thought and improvisational skill constitutes not fiscal, but intellectual impoverishment?

We got nuthin', they mutter ... and all the while, our one-way, auto-centric, plainly unsafe street grid remains a neglected afterthought, one seemingly incapable of principled adjustment until a paid consultant assuages municipal timidity with dollops of political cover.

Yes, of course Seeds and Greens has a parking lot, and people driving cars will come there to shop. But the speed with which they travel, the way the street grid is designed -- the overall downtown milieu -- is subject to immediate adjustment to reinforce the downtown commercial climate, not urinate on it.

An example:

Must we wait for a traffic study to slow traffic and put crosswalks at the corner of Main and W. 1st?

Apart from when the city winks and hands its infrastructure to Harvest Homecoming's junta each year, the city does control its streets and sidewalks. The city can alter these so they're conducive to better business. Right-sizing, completing, calming, converting streets ... slowing traffic speeds, enforcing crosswalks, enhancing walking, biking and a human-scale district ... all these factors are favorable for the new generation of downtown independent business, major pieces of which might have been commenced years ago.

City government taking action to improve business prospects.

That's economic development, isn't it?

Why, then, isn't any of it happening?

The city's "Economic Development", as vague and undefined and last year's model.

The web site's only a year behind. In the context of New Albany, that's almost progress ... but of course, not really.

I'm no slave to mission statements like the one below, seeing as their default usage in modern times is designed to render inexact gibberish. However, I'll repeat my familiar theme of late: Isn't it possible, and in fact, preferable, for the city's economic development apparatus to be able to define and delineate its policies (if any) to distinguish between job creation in the industrial park and exurban settings (i.e., those receiving the lion's share of local government subsidy) and those in indie retail and services in the historic core -- you know, those receiving virtually no assistance from traditional economic "development" arms of local government?

Is there a plan? It isn't that we don't trust city hall ... but might we actually see the plan with our own eyes? Keeping it hidden under vests makes it difficult to discern shape and size.

And can it be next year's plan, and not the one from 2012 (below)? Perhaps the city's web site content provider for-hire has been too busy appending exclamation marks to every one-way social media utterance to have time for an update.


Economic Development

David Duggins
Director, Economic Development and Redevelopment
311 Hauss Square, Room 325
New Albany, IN 47150-3586
(812) 948-5333, phone
(812) 948-5329, fax
dduggins@cityofnewalbany.com

The City of New Albany’s Economic Development Department is committed to serving the community by aggressively pursuing new job opportunities and quality of life amenities for our citizens. We will accomplish this goal through both increased economic development and community development projects. Our department focuses on providing necessary leadership to our existing business community to ensure a vibrant business environment in all economic climates, while aggressively seeking new companies for our community.

STAFF

David Duggins, Director of Economic Development and Redevelopment

Community Development Block Grant Program & Schedule

The views of citizens, public agencies, and other interested parties are solicited to ensure reasonable and accessible involvement of the citizens of New Albany in the drafting, implementation, and assessment of the City of New Albany's Fiscal Year FY2012 One-Year Action Plan.

Participation shall be solicited through a Public Information Meeting, Public Hearings and the Department of Redevelopment. The full draft of the Citizens Participation Plan shall be made available at various community centers throughout the City, including the Redevelopment office and the New Albany-Floyd County Public Library.

The current schedule for 2012 public information meetings, public hearings and key dates is as follows. Annual meetings are scheduled thereafter. The Public information meetings are held at arious locations and all public hearings are held in the Assembly Room, Room 331 City-County Building, (unless otherwise noted)

Tuesday, March 6, 2012, 2:30 p.m. and 7:00 p.m.
NARC meeting to conduct two Public Hearings to accept input into the development of the FY2012 One-Year Action Plan.

Saturday, March 10, 2012
Publish in Tribune the DRAFT FY2012 One-Year Action Plan.

Monday, March 12, 2012 through Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Thirty-day comment period commences and concludes.

Tuesday, April 10, 2012, 2:30 p.m.
NARC Meeting to ADOPT the Final FY2012 One-Year Action Plan.

Thursday, April 19, 2012 or Monday, May 7, 2012, 7:30 p.m.
New Albany Common Council will adopt a Resolution formally authorizing submittal of the FY2012 One-Year Action Plan to the U. S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Thursday, September 11, 2012, 2:30 p.m.
NARC will conduct a Public Hearing to report the Grantee’s performance for FY2011.

Please verify meetings due to possible dates, rooms and/or time changes. Questions and/or written comments shall be received in the Redevelopment Department, Room 325, City-County Building, New Albany, Indiana or by contacting 812-948-5333.

"The Deafness Before the Storm."

Keith Olbermann's feed at Twitter is worth a glance, too.

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR: The Deafness Before the Storm, by Kurt Eichenwald (New York Times)

... I have read excerpts from many of them, along with other recently declassified records, and come to an inescapable conclusion: the administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed. In other words, the Aug. 6 document, for all of the controversy it provoked, is not nearly as shocking as the briefs that came before it.

Geez, it's been a whole month.

Time to collect your signs from this scenic location on Rolling Creek Drive.