For the record: Three prompt acknowledgments of receipt, with city-subsidized Develop New Albany persisting in unresponsiveness.

As noted recently, NA Confidential asks many questions, and regular readers know all too well that not all these questions are answered.

For more than two years, Bob Caesar and the city of New Albany have combined to stonewall every effort we've made to explore Bicentennial Commission finances.

The history of our public records requests from City Hall is one of unending futility; the legal department merely giggles amid blatant subterfuge, partial answers and related diversions.

Adam Dickey's disney-fried Democratic Party has blocked us from social media communications channels. All the while the Southern Indiana-based chain newspaper looks the other way, and the one in Louisville seldom looks this direction at all.

But we persist in the belief that even when savagely rebuffed, a trail of post-it notes in the form of comments on various public records (meeting minutes, etc.) might some day assist the reparations committee and federal investigators when the New Gahania Wall finally crumbles.

Following are updates on the most recent round of information requests, with the oldest coming first.

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Develop New Albany is playing hard to reach.

November 20: GREEN MOUSE SAYS: We keep trying to ask DNA about the Taco Walk, and DNA keeps making like Jeff Gahan on the down low.

To date, I haven't received a reply to any of these three separate (August) queries. However, I think the message was received, because at some point in late September or early October, the e-mail addresses of DNA board members were scrubbed from the web site. How very Gahanesque, hence this public notice of intent.

If you're keeping score, NAC's total since the Taco Walk is four unanswered e-mails, in addition to our apparent removal from the notification list for monthly merchant meetings. I've asked for clarification of the latter ... and received no reply.

Who do they think they are, anyway?

Wait -- don't answer that.

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The good news is that both redevelopment officials replied promptly today to yesterday's questions.

November 29: For the record, my letter to redevelopment officials v.v. Dan Coffey's for-pay parking lot on city property during Harvest Homecoming.

My question: Did the Redevelopment Commission, or someone on the city’s redevelopment staff, or one of you, or the mayor himself, issue explicit permission for Coffey to use public property for parking cars during Harvest Homecoming?

If yes, is there a record?

If no, then doesn’t this mean it was illegal, and if so, what does the city propose to do about it?

First, the interim director.

Mr. Baylor:

Please let this serve as notice of receipt of your email dated November 29. Our office will review and research this matter and provide the appropriate response and/or update within 10 days.

Shane L. Gibson
Corporate Counsel
City of New Albany

Then the board member/secretary.

Dear Mr. Baylor: Thank you for your response. I apologize for the delay in getting back with you as I have been out of town on business the past several days. I believe City Attorney Shane Gibson has responded to your inquiry and will be providing you the information you requested. If you have any questions, please direct them to Mr. Gibson at 812-948-5333.

Sincerely,

Adam Dickey
Board Member
New Albany Redevelopment Commission

Of course, the bad news is that similarly unctuous responses have come our way before, to be followed by a staggering boatload of nothingness.

However, as opposed to DNA's injudiciousness, these purely bureaucratic notes of receipt are better than none at all.

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Finally, Linda Moeller also was very prompt.

November 29: For the record, my letter to the city controller v.v. payroll claims.

My request concerns a specific claim, as follows:

CLAIMS
Payroll Claims: 1,058,603.61
(Bank 2)

Can you please provide me with an itemized listing of these claims?

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Mr. Baylor,

I am in receipt of your email request for copies of payroll claims that were approved by the BOW on November 7th and will provide or give you a status update within 10 days.

Linda Moeller
Controller, City of New Albany

I harbor no illusions, and yet the efforts will continue.

For the record, my letter to the city controller v.v. payroll claims.

I e-mailed this letter at 12:00 p.m. on Wednesday, November 29, 2017. Like sand in the hourglass, so are the days of our lives ... in the absence of a newspaper.

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To: Linda Moeller, city controller

Greetings,

On November 7, 2017, the Board of Public Works and Safety approved claims presented to the body by your office. My request concerns a specific claim, as follows:

CLAIMS
Payroll Claims: 1,058,603.61
(Bank 2)

Can you please provide me with an itemized listing of these claims? If these are not accessible to members of the public according to the stipulations of Indiana’s Public Access Laws, can you point me to the section explaining this?

Thanks,

Roger

Here's how to make top dollar as a public employee in your state.

At first I thought this was a joke.

Sadly, it is not humor, but real. Thanks to W for the link.

Infographic: Who’s The Highest-Paid Public Employee In Your State?

In May, a reporter at Deadspin released a carefully compiled map of the United States’ highest-paid public workers. After Reuben Fisher-Baum culled through state salary databases and various media reports, he tallied the findings.

The list of highest-paid active employees counts 27 football coaches, 13 basketball coaches, and 1 hockey coach. The leftover ten include five college presidents, a medical school chancellor, a medical school department chair, a medical school plastic surgeon, and a law school dean. (The math gets you to 51 positions because Minnesota’s football and basketball coach are each earning $1.2 million.)

Floyd County: Drunken sailors welcome here.

It's just surreal, that's all.

We've shifted from perpetual scorched earth into full speed drive-through windows framed with gold, as the city and county bond millions in a Parks Race, and the school corporation silences the earth movers charged with devouring the neighborhood around NAHS just long enough to fatten pay packets ... well, let's party!

All NA-FC employees deserving a pay raise, please step forward.

(Umm, not so fast, teachers)

New Albany-Floyd County school board approves raises, by Grace Schneider (CJ)

After a string of years where tight budgets ruled, the New Albany-Floyd County school board opened the checkbook Monday night and approved salary increases for bus drivers, cooks, principals, school psychologists and top administrators.

Principals and other central-office administrators received the largest increase, 1.5 percent overall, with a few receiving 4 percent or more under a package that aims to standardize pay rates for positions ...

... The pay increases come after the school board voted unanimously last October to approve no pay increases for the school system’s 650 teachers under a contract that covered the last school year. The board also voted to drastically reduce teacher health care benefits, saying the reductions were necessary because of an expected $2.8 million reduction in state aid during 2012-2013.

Before the 5-1 vote, board member Becky Gardenour said she objected to taking action on administrator raises before the board could consider what to do for teachers.

“To me, we should be dealing with the teachers before the administrators. I think it’s backwards,” said Gardenour, who cast the only vote in opposition. Roger Whaley abstained because his wife is the Floyd Central principal.

As community gapes in disbelief, its school board rewards Hibbard for welcoming the punishment meted out by Tony Bennett's great hammer of learnin'.

There probably isn't much capable of being added here that hasn't already been written, and with palpable intensity, within the comments for the News and Tribune's guest column by school board member DJ Hines. In retrospect, Hines' carefully orchestrated apologia for a move few people knew was coming until it had already concluded would have drawn more favorable responses if he had proposed mandatory nude atheism for the school board, rather than a pay raise for the school superintendent, which by any available barometer runs counter to the prevailing themes of the local zeitgeist.

New Albany school chief will receive 20% raise, by Harold J. Adams (Courier-Journal)

The New Albany-Floyd County school board faced down standing-room-only opposition and approved an immediate 20 percent raise for Superintendent Bruce Hibbard during the board’s regular meeting Monday night.

In a 5-2 vote, the board boosted Hibbard’s annual base pay by $28,500 to $170,500 and extended his contract by two years through the 2014-2015 school year. The pact also includes a $10,000 bonus for the current school year to be paid on July 1.

Hibbard’s new annual compensation package is $189,400, including previous deferred compensation of $12,000 and monthly stipends of $500 for a vehicle and $75 for a cellphone.

Board members Rebecca Gardenour and Lee Cotner voted against the raise, citing a continuing budget crunch in the district. “According to our financial officers, we still need to make at least $2.8 million in cuts,” Gardenour said.

“So the bottom line is we cannot afford to give our superintendent a raise at this time,” she said to a hearty round of applause from a board room packed with hundreds of people.

Cotner called Hibbard “an incredible talent” who has improved academic performance in the schools. “However there’s an economic reality … that is we’re spending more money than we’re taking in,” Cotner said. “In that environment I can’t support a pay raise at this time.”

Hibbard has presided over the closing of four elementary schools, the laying off of dozens of teachers, the elimination of certified teachers in elementary art, music and physical education classes, the outsourcing of custodial work and the reduction of benefits for classroom aides, all in an effort to close a yawning deficit.

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?

Open thread: Remuneration in the news.

It's time for the annual Tribune listing of top pay. Enjoy, and discuss if the spirit moves you.

• Firefighters top New Albany’s salary list again for 2008

• A look at 2008’s top paid employees, vendors in Floyd County