Council Night 2: Gahan rules by edict via unelected boards, so Gonder posits a more pro-active council.

I probably borrowed this from the newspaper. 

Lots to digest here, so we'll travel point by point.

Gonder not pleased with lack of action by New Albany City Council in 2014, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — The New Albany City Council approved a third consecutive balanced budget in 2014.

But several meetings included no voting items or only a nonbinding resolution for consideration, and Councilman John Gonder said he felt like there was more that could have been done by the city’s legislative body last year.

“It’s sort of bothersome that we had a number of meetings where we were literally in and out in 15 minutes,” he said. “I think it seems like we’re trying to slip into reelection mode here and not do anything that would get anybody to object.”

Here's the specific reality that should be most bothersome to the conscientious council members.

Many big projects such as the aquatic center and recently the approval of a dog park and expansion of the downtown Farmers Market were approved by boards other than the council. The council did give its blessing to the aquatic center, but the New Albany Redevelopment Commission essentially holds the purse strings to the project.

Ah, but what, the mayor's left hand man worry?

Councilman Pat McLaughlin has served as the president of the body the past two years, and will seek a third-term in the seat Monday.

“I think we’ve had some good years, and some good, objective dialogue with the administration,” he said Friday.

The city has launched significant quality-of-life projects in the outdoor aquatic center and Silver Street Park, which are set to open in 2015, and McLaughlin said he would like to see New Albany pave more streets and alleys this year.

That's right, "objective dialogue" with a mayor who never attends council meetings, leaving us to guess that most of the chatting took place amid surf 'n' turf and longnecks at the Roadhouse. That, and even more paving in a time of stormwater runoff.

Meanwhile, CM Gonder notes "missed opportunities in 2014."

(Gonder) was a proponent of salvaging the former tavern at 922 Culbertson Ave. which was ordered to be razed by the administration. He said the demolition was a blow to historic preservation efforts in New Albany.

Gonder also wanted to see more progress on pedestrian projects such as adding sidewalks along Captain Frank Road and Slate Run Road.

The revamp of the city’s property maintenance codes should give the council a real opportunity to bring positive change to the city, Gonder said.

The ordinance — which is sponsored by Councilman Kevin Zurschmiede — has been tabled since last month. Administration officials said they wanted the changes to match state standards before moving forward with the legislation.

And then there is this.

Gonder said he would like to see the ordinance expanded to include rental property registration and other regulations that would curb problems with slumlords.

Wait -- you mean to say that the council is contemplating a property maintenance code update without including rental property registration and heightened slumlord scrutiny?

Isn't that like a doctor fixing your broken leg by prescribing a new pair of khakis?

With Main Street's botched deforestation plan almost complete, soon we'll be turning our lonely eyes to Jeff Speck.

When this or any other mayoral administration trumpets its achievements, consider the notion of opportunity cost. Given that there never will be enough time and money to go around, what opportunities were ignored in order to implement those chosen?

Might the time and money have been expended for other more important opportunities?

Shouldn't weighing these pros and cons be a prime determinant in measuring job performance?

If you're wondering why this matters, see Jeff Speck's first of three announcements below. It has taken Lowell, Massachusetts four years to revert the city's one-way streets back to two ways.

In New Albany, we've been talking about this for at least a decade, as three successive mayors have elevated foot-dragging on city streets to the level of Olympic sport ... or, at the very least, to that of synchronized swimming, assuming the aquatic center allows it.

If one feels, as I do, that completed and calmed two-way streets are the single best coordinated grassroots strategy for encouraging the overall revival of downtown New Albany, then numerous other uncoordinated projects ostensibly intended to achieve the same end, while perhaps classifying as "wants", have not been "needs", and have cost us the opportunity to get our streets right following fifty years of suburban-inspired doltishness.

Among other reasons, this lot opportunity is why the Main Street project's Ceausescuesque, grandiose waste is so appalling, but trust me ... Main Street's epic fail goes much further.

Although it seems as though the release date for Jeff Speck's street study keeps being pushed back, some day it finally will land. Even if the current administration honors its understated pledges and agrees to implement Speck's findings, Lowell's experience shows that this might take many years.

And New Albany has wasted these same four years, three consecutive times.

OK, you know I only write when I've got some important news ...

Three neat things to report this time:

1. Well it took 4 years -- a blink of the eye in Planner Time -- but Lowell, MA, where we did our 2010 Downtown Evolution Plan, has reverted the majority of its one-way system back to two way.  The switch went off "without incident," and merchants are already seeing a difference.

Here's are some excerpts from my talk there this month:
http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_26655793/downtown-redevelopment-hailed-at-lowell-plan-breakfast

2. We submitted our Downtown West Palm Beach Walkability Study in September.  This is our best yet.  Read it here:
http://walkablewpb.com/reference-documents/downtown-walkability-study/

You can also see my full presentation here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04Rh_pmu7tE

3. Finally, just dropped this week, my first article in ages.  I wrote it because I had to:  Ten Not Twelve!  A design mantra we can all support.  It's gotten a lot of attention, but it needs more.  Please share it if you agree:
http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/10/why-12-foot-traffic-lanes-are-disastrous-for-safety-and-must-be-replaced-now/381117/

That's enough for now.  There's more good stuff on the website:
http://jeffspeck.com

Thanks for listening.  Let me know if you don't want any more of these emails.

Ten Not Twelve!
JBS

The opportunity cost of reading a newspaper is that your parakeet must wait to poop.

Now that public art is a concept to be displayed across the street from the 'Bama Post & Folderol's nerveless center in Jeffersonville, suddenly it exists.

Meanwhile, in New Albany, we've taken a two-track approach. The private sector has tried to promote and fund public art as a concept, even as the public sector has gazed longingly at its "Dogs Playing Poker" office prints and shrugged, preferring to channel the bulk of its abbreviated attention span in other directions, ones more calculable for accruing chits redeemable in the great game of local patronage politics.

My personal view: What the Carnegie Center has done these past few years in terms of public art has been amazing. Too bad we've tended to pit arts organizations against each other when it comes to allocating resources, and even worse that at a larger level, we've squandered those resources on "quality of life" bricks and mortar projects like an aquatic center destined to be unused most of the year.

Why do I return again and again to the aquatics center?

Because it illustrates the concept of opportunity cost. City Hall's decision to prioritize an aquatics center cost us opportunities to expend time and resources elsewhere.

To me, public art is like street grid reform. The all-encompassing ripple effects from both embrace much larger swaths of the city's terrain, involving greater numbers of people, and are available for consumption every single day of the year -- not merely during the height of summer. The aquatic center represents a suburban "Leave It to Beaver" ideal of plaque-mounting expenditure, promoted by reference to undefined ideals, like those painfully amorphous "quality of life" words.

Outdoor aquatics may be viewed as "special" during a strictly seasonal usage, but the center differs not one jot from what political mediocrities in other cities have been able to painstakingly conceive, absent groundings in modernity that might suggest alternatives.

By focusing on the aquatics center, we've lost opportunities to make the city "special" on a daily basis, because being "special" every single day is what compels attraction and commitment. It's what might bring people to New Albany to live, not just visit. It's what affects those already living here the most.

Art can do that. So can complete streets, and walkability. They establish an unmistakable atmosphere that says we're serious about being serious. The newspaper joins both local political parties in being unable to fathom it, so I suppose we'll keep making the point right here.

In microeconomic theory, the opportunity cost of a choice is the value of the best alternative forgone, in a situation in which a choice needs to be made between several mutually exclusive alternatives given limited resources. Assuming the best choice is made, it is the "cost" incurred by not enjoying the benefit that would be had by taking the second best choice available. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines it as "the loss of potential gain from other alternatives when one alternative is chosen".

The farmers market, opportunity cost, and decision-making prior to fact-gathering.

At last Thursday's city council meeting, I mentioned the opportunity cost of tying up the southeast corner of Market and Bank with a farmers market expansion.

Opportunity cost: The cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a certain action. Put another way, the benefits you could have received by taking an alternative action.

Councilman Gonder explains this opportunity cost in much greater detail:

If, on the other hand, the market were successful at the new garage site, (and it likely would be, because the local food movement is real and has been embraced by so many) then the current market site at Bank and Market Streets could be returned to service as a fully functional component of downtown commercial revitalization. It makes little sense to have one of the most economically valuable, as well as spatially valuable, pieces of property in the entire downtown, off the tax rolls, and dedicated to only intermittent use for eight or ten days a month six or seven months out of the year.

If set on a different course, that corner could be thrown open to a design challenge which could yield exciting possibilities not now visualized.

If, on the other hand, the City commits hundreds of thousands of dollars to that corner, the very expenditure itself is likely to shackle us to that piece of property, while other more profitable, enhancing, and defining, uses of the property are turned away from the downtown and, rather, sent to the outer reaches of town where development, while necessary and welcome, contributes less to what is the true heart of our City.

Yesterday, another friend put it this way:

Opportunity cost is when you have the fleeting opportunity of just a mere 48 months to spend an entire generation's tax dollars. You tend to focus on spending rather than planning.

What I find noteworthy is a very clear pattern over the past two years. A decision is made and fully funded, then reasons found to support the pre-determined conclusion. From swimming pools to the farmers market, this pattern has been repeated. Only once has there been an exception: There must be a study to determine the future of the one-way street grid before a decision is reached.

If you want to know why I'm pessimistic about the future of two-way streets and walkability in New Albany, this is the reason. If you wish to know more, ask John Rosenbarger -- who already has made up his mind.