Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning: "We are people who just passionately want to create stronger and better neighborhoods and help build a better community together."

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0 ... this opportunity is gone." Anyone got a Kleenex?

As Team Gahan continues to pout, the grassroots activists behind Colonial Manor Redevelopment Visioning continue to work. The report below was filed at Facebook.

At this point, shouldn't City Hall and the Democrats be resolving to be a part of the solution, rather than staging election-year temper tantrums?

Hello, everybody!

It has been an extremely busy past month for our Colonial Manor Redevelopment Citizens Coalition. So, time for an update.

We have gathered and curated an ever-growing collection of community feedback and taken an expanded look at our marketing data. We have held conversations with the Colonial Manor owner in California and his representation locally. And, we have spent many hours identifying and initiating one-on-one conversations with locally-owned businesses and organizations that may be thinking of expanding, considering new or additional locations, or just starting up.

We have worked to match our listening data and demographics up with businesses and organizations that may be a really good match for redeveloped and renovated space. Plus, we've been working hard to build some strategic partnerships between businesses, helping some of them figure out how they could perhaps mutually support and strengthen each other in a space like that.

Last week, we brought just a few of those businesses and organizations together with an owner's representative to begin to explore some possibilities, discuss needs and vision, and take a quick survey of some potential funding sources and options for support.

NOW---we want to broaden our vision and potential partners! If you have a local retail or service business, a cafe or restaurant, or are a not-for-profit seeking to make an increased impact in serving our community---and may be interested in exploring a renewed Colonial Manor---we would love to draw you into our exciting conversation.

Our aim as volunteers is to support, encourage, and assist the owner in any way we can with building a new day for the center and, in turn, enhancing the quality of life for our local neighborhoods. Have some ideas? Want to get together with some of us and talk? Interested in volunteering? Just send us a message and let's do some dreaming and help some of our local businesses and organizations perhaps make some extraordinary things happen.

Thanks to all who have continued to be encouragers, helpers, and sources of learning for us. We aren't real estate developers. We have no ownership interests in that development. We are just a growing group of ordinary, everyday people (with other jobs!), big hearts, relentless energy, diverse skills and talents, and what we believe is a bit of a gift for listening and matching people/businesses with our neighborhoods and our community's needs.

We are people who just passionately want to create stronger and better neighborhoods and help build a better community together. Please continue to support us in any way you can as we continue the journey.

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0 ... this opportunity is gone." Anyone got a Kleenex?

"It's all private property."

Yes, Deaffrey ... it is private property, and YOU can do anything you want with it.

Texas anti-masturbation bill moves closer to becoming law, by Adam Lusher (Independent)

Under the Man’s Right to Know Act, Texan men would be fined $100 for every 'unregulated masturbatory emission' - although they may be reassured to learn this is a satirical bill highlighting how women have been targeted by anti-abortion laws.

A bill that would see Texas men fined $100 (£82) for masturbating has taken a step closer to becoming law after it received its first reading in the state’s House of Representatives.

Under section 173.010 of House Bill 4260, the Man’s Right to Know Act, Texas men would only be allowed to masturbate under supervision, inside approved health care and medical facilities ...

Looks like it's time for Adam to have that father-to-son chat with Deafferson.

Wait -- what was that?

The article's from 2017 and it isn't even about Colonial Manor?

My bad. Thanks to J for directing me to the real piece of belated local journalism.

Back to 'square one' for Colonial Manor redevelopment in New Albany

City officials still consider area a priority

"If it wasn't an election year it would have passed 9-0," New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan said. "The council's vote killed this opportunity. This opportunity is gone ... the council's no vote killed the deal ... a corridor study about what? It's all private property ... it was decided to move forward and buy the property ... we missed our chance to revitalize Colonial Manor. Nothing is scheduled to happen at this time. It's a disappointment."

Gahan's Colonial Manor solution?

Fact is, redevelopment's fix was a hurried election-year political ploy from the start, but as we've noted previously, politics is a bauble for Gahan alone. No one else can be allowed to play with his ... er, toys.

 Our mayor's quite the crybaby when he doesn't clutch get his own way, isn't he?

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Deaf Gahan wants to annex Grant Line Elementary School. Why didn't the Redevelopment Commission discuss this at its last meeting?

At the most recent Redevelopment Commission meeting, the made-for-election-year hosannas could be heard all the way out in Galena, where a similar investment in dead weights is being financed not by a brain-dead mayor, but by bake sales and GoFundMe.

New Albany High School weight room receives $100,000 TIF gift, by Chris Morris (Tom May Column Expositor)

Money will come from TIF funds

NEW ALBANY — New Albany High School's Health and Wellness initiative soon may see a significant upgrade thanks to a $100,000 grant from the New Albany Redevelopment Commission.

The money, which will come out of Tax Increment Financing or TIF funds, will be used to enhance both the health and wellness curriculum as well as purchase equipment for the school's weight room. The measure still must be approved by the New Albany Floyd County School Board at the March 11 meeting.

The redevelopment commission is allowed to use 15 percent of TIF funds for educational spending, and member Adam Dickey said this will have a positive impact on New Albany.

"This will benefit kids across our community," Dickey said. "This is a way as a city we can have an impact to help out the school corporation and impact lives in a very meaningful way."

This example of re-election campaign publicity hokum was so ill-considered that even David Barksdale voted against it.

But now it seems that the devil resided in ANOTHER detail. Back to Papa Morris:

BLACKBERRY RIDGE HILL

The redevelopment commission approved a contract with Clark Dietz, Inc. to design plans to shave three feet from the hill near the Blackberry Ridge entrance off Grant Line Road. Where the entrance to the development is located creates a blind spot for drivers pulling out onto Grant Line Road. Plans are expected to be finished in July and there is no timetable when work will begin.

Clark Dietz? Is it the same Clark Dietz that has gifted the mayor with $34,400 since 2011?

But I digress.

The Green Mouse has learned that the New Albany-Floyd County School Corporation's board will be asked to approve -- or is it to request? -- the city's annexation of land that includes Grant Line Elementary School, located a short distance from the Blackberry Ridge.

Apparently the topic of annexation did not arise at the Redevelopment meeting in question, although one might have found it of interest in light of the roadwork, right?

The city's annexation pitch to the school administration, which in turn has passed the glad-handing to the school board (the approval of which apparently is necessary), goes something like this: annexation will make the road work easier for the city, and annexation will then benefit Grant Line Elementary by (a) reducing sewer bills and (b) shifting responsibility for emergency responses to the NAFD.

The Green Mouse sounds weary.

Let me get this straight. With an election coming and "TIF for Schools" under fire via state legislation, Gahan tosses $100,000 at the school corporation that employs his wife and daughter, and Irving Joshua prattles nonsensically about weight training being the same thing as redevelopment; then, with little or no advance information provided to its own board, the school corporation encourages immediate compliance with/capitulation to an annexation move so well camouflaged it was completely invisible. Do these people ever do anything in the open -- and could Chris Morris ask a good question every other year, or is that too much to ask?  

Sadly, here in New Gahania it's business-on-the-down-low-as-usual. 

GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Is Denton Floyd acquiring the Reisz building for use by a relocated NA City Hall? We think a deal is imminent.

Last week, I took to Instagram with a question.

Anyone know these men? They were speaking Engineerese about the Reisz building when I walked past them yesterday. I'd have asked them myself, but I speak no foreign languages except Bier Deutsch.

The Green Mouse since has been told that Team Gahan will soon reveal a deal for the Schmitt family to sell the long moribund Reisz Furniture Warehouse Store to Denton Floyd Real Estate Group, the Louisville developer currently rehabilitating the old M. Fine & Sons factory at the 140 block of East Main.

Apparently Denton Floyd has retained an option on the Reisz building. The Remax Commercial Group website has the building's price as $410,000.

According to a Louisville contractor familiar with the situation, the cost of renovating the building is being placed at $2.5 million, although the contractor said he thinks this figure is far too low, and feels like a better estimate is $4.5 - 6 million.

Presumably the Gahan administration would be incentivizing the building's restoration with the usual array of abatements, and once finished, City Hall would occupy space in the structure.

Note that the City-County Building on Hauss Square is Floyd County's possession, not the city of New Albany's. The city reportedly pays somewhere around $250,000 yearly for rent. A source told the Green Mouse that the figure being quoted for future monthly rent at the salvaged Reisz building would be $22,000, though again the cost of repairs might inflate this figure, which is comparable to the current yearly expenditure.

If the city's participation is approved and financed through the Redevelopment Commission -- a typical City Hall evasive stratagem -- it might conceivably occur without the approval of city council or elected officials other than Mayor Jeff Gahan himself.

As a postscript, the Green Mouse adds that while chatting with the contractor, he observed that his usual sources among New Albanian political operatives seemed to know nothing about the Reisz maneuvering:

"Are your sources Democrats or Republicans?"

"Mostly Republicans. Local Democrats no longer speak with genuine leftists."

"Rest assured, the ranking Democrats in New Albany know all about it, and they're keeping this one down in that bunker that you guys always talk about."

Whaddya know?

Share it with us.

It's a photo contest! "Let's Find the Entrance to Jeff Gahan's Down Low Bunker."

With remorseless precision, we've established that Mayor Jeff Gahan's paranoia and agoraphobia combine to keep him effectively hidden, apart from those times when a triumphant and badly written press releases exalts his cult of personality, or when he can make carefully choreographed public appearances.

The give and take of debate? Nope.

bunker mentality

n. An attitude of extreme defensiveness and self-justification based on an often exaggerated sense of being under persistent attack from others.

But where exactly is the bunker located?

Does it work something like this?

Or maybe it's here somewhere.

Working together, we can find the entrance to Jeff Gahan's down-low bunker of back alley governance. 

My opening suggestion is shown above, though merely to illustrate the art of the possible. This contest is open to one and all. Probably the best way to participate is to go to the Facebook event page we've created.

Of course, you also can submit a photo through the usual channels.

The door to Gahan's lair might be located anywhere. If you think you've spotted it, let us know.

ASK THE BORED: It's Harvest Homecoming's turn to run the city, so let's talk street grid reform.

Today marks the beginning of BOW's unofficial annual vacation.

There'll still be Tuesday morning meetings this week and next, but in effect, Harvest Homecoming is a surreal suspension of municipal reality (and governance), and little of substance will be done until the festival concludes.

Consequently, let's talk about the street grid, upon which BOW will rule at some point in October or November. Specifically, we must remember a pertinent fact.

The most depressing reason why the past year and a half of New Albany's street grid history has been utterly wasted isn't just that we might already be enjoying the benefits of two-way streets. It's that these benefits remain unknown to so many, as the time might have been used by the city to educate the populace about street grid reform's civic multipliers, whether walkability, small business enhancement or property value. 

And it was not. 

Unfortunately, as is its reflex habit, the city has chosen to publicly frame the street grid issue on a last-minute basis, and almost exclusively in auto-centric terms. By doing so, the city has chosen to invite rebuttals framed in exactly the same terms, and with discussions of ancillary benefits forever kept on the down-low, Luddites like Irv are free to wander through town, peddling bilge and inciting fear about where-oh-where will our poor trucks unload?

As detailed previously, Irv's peripatetic enumerations of presumed community support are generally contrived or thin-air fiction, designed to divide stakeholders and create rancor. They're primarily partisan knee-jerks, and as such, it's truly striking that some downtown business owners who strongly support City Hall also loudly oppose street grid reform.

If you're Jeff Gahan, how on earth do you let this happen?

Answer: When you've spent the past four years making like the proverbial clam, refusing to expend political capital and to publicly support what you privately insist is your own pet project. Gahan has not been willing to own two-way streets; therefore Irv happily has occupied the void, pulling New Albany's flat-earthers along with him.

Yes, Irv is as mistaken about streets as a human being can be, but he knows a gift horse when he sees it.

It remains that if I were to tail Stumler and follow his street grid hyperbole with a rational presentation, it is highly likely that I, too, could construct a petition favorably jigged to my point of view.

Come to think of it, I've done so previously on more than one occasion during those lengthy periods of City Hall silence on the matter. I'd also be willing to bet that both our lists would contain the same names. All we'd have proven is that there are solid reasons for keeping ballots private.

Ultimately, even if Gahan follows through and implements the watered down HWC version of Jeff Speck's stirring proposals, these grid changes will come as the result of a writ issued from on high, and not through grassroots education, persuasion and leadership. That's a colossal wasted opportunity, isn't it?

Perhaps the best we can hope for is tacit support from many business owners who trust the private assurances and ignore the plain fact that Gahan has yet to GO TO BAT for these two-way ideals. I wish they'd organize and speak out, and yet I know how this works. Beating a drum for 13 years can grow tiresome. It's someone else's turn to advocate.

In the end, it's possible that we'll get some of what is needed most, although tellingly, the most persuasive reason for supporting HWC's plan probably will turn out to be the way it cleverly leverages federal money not just to restripe one-way streets and transform a downtown, but to completely mill and repave each and every targeted street to make it suitable for two-way traffic ... and to release local paving slush funds for politically remunerative projects elsewhere.

To repeat: I know how this works.

HWC Engineering's two-way streets proposal

Team Gahan's walkability gap (3 of 3): "A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets." WE NEED IT.

Previously at NAC:

Get your copy now: "Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution."

Sadik-Khan makes two points that Team Gahan probably won't ever grasp: Transportation is multi-modal by definition, and restoring streets as a means of transit by all users need not be expensive.

But this is precisely why any future effort aimed at walkability in New Albany is dead to the mayor if it can be done inexpensively.

How can Jeff Gahan fund his election campaigns via efficiency of expenditure?

You need grease. Lots and lots of grease.

A Playbook on the Politics of Better Streets, by Richard Florida (City Lab)

In conversation with former New York City transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

 ... In her new book Streetfight: Handbook for an Urban Revolution—written with her longtime colleague and chief media strategist Seth Solomonow—Sadik-Khan tells the story of how she made it happen, offering a roadmap for making cities and neighborhoods safer, more sustainable, and more connected. And she argues this can be done without spending huge sums of money. By emphasizing fast, easy-to-implement, “do-it-yourself” solutions, Sadik-Khan makes the case that being smart and creative—not having access to a hefty budget—matters most.

The crux of it:

Biking is transportation. Walking is transportation. Buses are transportation. Where bikes are perceived as a nuisance it’s often just a symptom of outdated street designs, which ultimately serve no one well. All these modes can play well together if they’re not forced to fight over the scraps of road left over after room is carved out for cars. Reclaiming road space for bikes, pedestrians, and buses isn’t a mere amenity, it’s an infrastructure and economic investment whose effects are felt far beyond the lane. So if you want better streets for everyone, you can start by building a bike lane.

Commentary worth repeating: Gahan's "balanced budget" claims are bogus.

(By Jeff Gillenwater)

Jeff Gahan says he's balanced the budget but the truth is he's significantly increased the budget, nearly doubling it. He says he's gotten us out of debt because former Mayor England's sewer rate increases - rate increases Gahan argued against - have paid off some sewer bonds but he doesn't mention his own borrowing, which has left us with increased not decreased debt levels.

Worth noting is that much of that debt is going toward paying off multimillion dollar projects that were awarded sans public bidding processes and, at least in some cases, have led to campaign kickbacks.

Now that we've taken on 20 years of debt to pay for them, Gahan says parks are a priority for quality of life but did not mention them at all when running for office. We're also now finding out about his administration taking options on Uptown area real estate and pursuing eminent domain actions on riverfront property but he's again not mentioning any of it in his campaign-- just like he didn't mention spending a million dollars on the golf course to the redevelopment commission or city council before he did it.

If anyone points these facts out too often, they're banished from campaign and party social media spaces. If people value transparency and honesty at all, they can't support this. If they do support it, they've really no right to complain in future about any political deceit. They will have chosen to tie their own blindfolds.

The really telling part is that, as Gahan and Floyd County Democrats block social media access to more and more people, they never actually deny what those people have said.

They can't.

They just don't want people to know about it. The truth makes them look bad so secrecy and lies begets more secrecy and lies. If incumbent and new Democratic council candidates won't speak up against such misleading tactics now, there's no reason to think they will if elected.

It's damning for the whole party.

Gahan is far more energetic in ducking debates than keeping campaign promises from 2011.

Shattered 2011 Gahan campaign promises, Part 1: The "good jobs" mayor!

Shattered 2011 Gahan campaign promises, Part 2: The "good education" mayor!

Shattered 2011 Gahan campaign promises, Part 3: The "let's work together" mayor!

Let's review.

In the assumption that Kevin Zurschmiede would be out of town for his son's wedding, Jeff Gahan carefully planned his mayoral debate schedule to avoid any unmanageable situation requiring the three of us to appear together, accepting invitations to events staged by the New Albany Housing Authority (Sept. 22) and the League of Women Voters (24th), and declining to participate in what obviously stood to be the most substantive and challenging, debate, as organized by Leadership Southern Indiana on the 29th.

Gahan already has refused to attend the Southern Indiana Realtors Association question and answer luncheon. Another such mayoral chat, put together by the Builders & Development Association, was cancelled. Had it been held, Gahan would not have been there.

Subsequently, Zurschmiede was able to alter his travel plans, and now he'll be able to come to Silver Street Park (Gahan's de facto "home" field) for the League's debate, which will feature questions provided in advance from LWV organizers like Linda Moeller, who also is Gahan's appointee as controller and openly acknowledges her position as high-ranking Gahan campaign worker.

Thus far, the League has managed to misspell Zurschmiede's name twice (differently each time) on promotional materials, which incorporate an 8-year-old photo of me, when literally dozens of more recent photos can be found merely by Googling my name and clicking on Images.

In short, the only debate at which all three candidates will appear is a softball toss orchestrated by Democrats supporting Gahan, who conveniently wave the League's "impartial" banner. It's a farce, and needs to be recognized as such, but I wouldn't think of missing.

I'd suggest you write to Gahan urging him to sprout a pair and come to the LSI debate on the 29th, but as we know, after four years in office, he doesn't yet have an official, published e-mail address. This in itself begs a question: Has our mayor been emulating Hillary Clinton by using a private e-mail address, one safely removed from public information requests, to conduct city business?

More on that another time. For now ...

Only one full-field debate set in New Albany mayoral race, by Daniel Suddeath (News and Tribune)

NEW ALBANY — New Albany Mayor Jeff Gahan will attend two debates ahead of the November general election.

He won't, however, be taking part in the Leadership Southern Indiana debate at New Albany High School on Sept. 29. As a result, voters will have just one opportunity to see all three candidates — Republican Kevin Zurschmiede, independent Roger Baylor and Gahan — on stage during the same forum.