Our SoIn RDA wants YOUR input on what it already has decided, but only if you happen to be in Salem this Friday at noon.

Oh, dear. I'm going to be lubricating my pitchfork, right?

Regional RDA Seeks Public Opinion to Reimagine Community Development Plan on April 5.

NEW ALBANY, IND (March 28, 2019) The Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority (RDA) is seeking advice from the public on the revision of a 2015 regional development plan on Friday, April 5th, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square, in Salem, Indiana. Anyone living or working in Clark, Floyd, Jefferson, Scott or Washington counties is welcome to attend.

Scroll down for the complete press release. Apparently this invitation was disseminated on March 28. A reader at Fb nails it.

"Nice. Everyone can run out to Salem on their lunch hour to put stickers on posters."

Wait ...

"I've had lunch on the fifth full for weeks. So has anyone with a 9-5 or otherwise super busy. Assholes."

Why, yes.

It seems that all Their Our Southern Indiana's 2019 meetings take place at 10:30 a.m. on Friday mornings. That's a wonderful time for working taxpayers to observe backroom politics in action.

What is this new OSI acronym all about, anyway? It's a place for oligarchs to ...

IMAGINE EMPOWER ILLUMINATE ... Welcome to the Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority

Ministered, administered. Input, shinput. As another reader pointed out, the public "input" meeting on Friday is intended for the public to indicate a preference as to which pre-determined idea is least offensive.

The Our SoIN RDA is administered by One Southern Indiana, the chamber of commerce and state recognized local development organization for Clark and Floyd counties in Indiana.

That's how 1Si rolls, so why exactly do we tolerate them, anyway? Of course, what do I know? I'm just a humanities major.

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Regional RDA Seeks Public Opinion to Reimagine Community Development Plan on April 5.

NEW ALBANY, IND (March 28, 2019) The Our Southern Indiana Regional Development Authority (RDA) is seeking advice from the public on the revision of a 2015 regional development plan on Friday, April 5th, from noon to 1:30 p.m. at the Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square, in Salem, Indiana. Anyone living or working in Clark, Floyd, Jefferson, Scott or Washington counties is welcome to attend.

After fifteen months, the RDA Board of Directors has completed the ground work and is ready to look at adapting the plan to the changed circumstances. For example, the original plan, which was completed in 2016 in response to the State of Indiana’s Regional Cities Initiative, included Harrison County. However, the Harrison County Council voted not to participate and has since been replaced by Jefferson County in the five-county Southern Indiana RDA. In addition, many location and regional municipalities within the RDA footprint have adopted community development plans which will need to be considered when updating the proposal.

The input session will be an open house featuring several stations where members of the public may learn more about the planning process, share ideas and discuss interests. Members of the planning team and the RDA board of directors will also be available to answer any questions.

The Indiana Economic Development Corporation granted the Our Southern Indiana RDA $150,000 in October of 2018 for this express purpose of updating the former plan. The goal of the Our Southern Indiana Regional Economic Development Plan is to chart a course, which if followed, will draw public and private investment and quality-of-life improvements to the Southern Indiana region.

In addition to setting goals for future projects, the plan will assess the regional assets and challenges and identify funding opportunities for the region and each county, as well as outline each county’s role in achieving regional goals. The end product will provide the RDA with a work plan that will become a sustainable guiding for the region for the next 15 years.

For more information 

Open house details are as follows:

Our Southern Indiana Regional Economic Development Plan Open House
• Friday, April 5, 2019
• Noon to 1:30 p.m.
• Washington County Courthouse, 99 Public Square
Salem, Indiana 47167

A sharrows symbol might as well be the Mark of Blithering Idiot on Jeff Gahan's forehead.

Here's what we know, to date. It's isn't pretty.

1. Mayor Jeff Gahan has spent millions of dollars on park units connected to each other not by walking or bicycling infrastructure, but by roads intended for use solely by cars. These roads require constant upkeep and paving, which in turn provide numerous conduits for campaign finance sluicing, but you already knew this.

2. Whenever "safety" is used as a mantra for street grid change, however fleeting and incremental, it is a dog whistle intended to describe conditions for motorists, not walkers or cyclists, because they're incidental in the grand scheme of beak-wetting.

3. During five years in office, all Gahan has done to guard against the eventuality of toll dodging is implement a grotesquely ballyhooed road diet on Spring between Vincennes and Beharrell, describe it in terms exclusive to automotive "safety", build no bicycle infrastructure whatever between Beharrell and Silver, then draw a few scant sharrow symbols on the pavement and create unprotected bike lanes from Silver to Vincennes, after which they continue ineffectively and still unprotected along high-speed, one-way Spring until petering out downtown.

4. None of these existing bike lanes are connected to any other, or to a park, or to the city's downtown commercial area, or evince any design of being connected to anything, now or in the future. They begin and end nowhere, and not once has a city planner ever revealed a comprehensive design that might convince us otherwise -- when they've bothered to answer questions at all.

5. Insofar as consultant Jeff Speck recommended protected bike lanes throughout the street grid as part of converting one-way streets to two-way traffic, 95% of his recommendations were tossed from the grandiosely tagged "Downtown Grid Modernization Project" in what might be termed as a late-term abortion.

6. While hideous, HWC Engineering's recasting of Speck's downtown street network proposal didn't materialize from the ether. It came at the behest of Gahan and the usual timer-serving suspects among city officials, among them David Duggins, the city's presumed economic development director, whose wife works for HWC, seeing as nepotism is job one with Gahan and not proposals representing genuine progress (see "beak-wetting" above).

7. And, just for the hell of it, if the opportunity presents itself to reduce shade along this botched and unrealized street grid by felling trees, Gahan's stellar team of suburbanites does this first, then insists that in spite of the absence of evidence to the contrary, far more trees are being planted than clear-cut. When we ask for the evidence, we're told that the poor, underfunded Tree Board can only do so much.

Think about the preceding.

Then consider that the very same time-serving paycheck endorsers instituting street grid mayhem as outlined above presently are seated on a steering committee to write a Comprehensive Plan to carry the city forward two whole decades.

To more of the same?

Who are you going to believe, John Rosenbarger or your own two eyes?

Today's photos are courtesy of Bicycle Lobby, on Twitter here.

Recent documentation of conditions in the civic asylum:

WITHIN CITY LIMITS: Episode XII, How Do I Join the New Albany Planning Committee?

The composition of Jeff Gahan's comprehensive plan steering committee guarantees yet another business-as-usual silo, and compels me to vomit.

New Albany's new Comprehensive Plan to be happily midwifed by precisely the same old suspects.

Jeff Speck on HWC Engineering's bicycle-free, two-way streets abortion: "I guess that's what you get when you ask engineers who do not value biking to change a plan."

The composition of Jeff Gahan's comprehensive plan steering committee guarantees yet another business-as-usual silo, and compels me to vomit.

The gang that can't shoot (or think) straight now seeks to institutionalize the incomprehension so that future generations of New Albanians can suffer just as readily as we are.

Mighty nice of them. The plaques probably are being stamped as we retch.

New Albany's new Comprehensive Plan to be happily midwifed by precisely the same old suspects.

And you think I'm kidding when I refer to this asylum as New Gahania?

The C-J's Madeleine Winer has updated her story to include comprehensive plan steering committee members, and here they are.

Members of the New Albany Comprehensive Plan Steering Committee

►Matt Chalfant, developer & owner of Chalfant Industries

►Wendy Dant Chesser, director of One Southern Indiana

►Corey Hughes, developer & real estate manager with Hughes Group

►Bill Wisehart, Director of Facilities for New Albany-Floyd County Schools

►Bob Norwood, New Albany Plan Commission President

►David Duggins, New Albany Director of Economic Development

►Ed Snelling, President of New Albany Elks Lodge #270

►Irving Joshua, New Albany Redevelopment Commission President

►John Rosenbarger, New Albany Public Facilities Director

►Larry Summers, New Albany City Engineer

►Paul Kiger, Realtor

►Rich Robinson, Develop New Albany

►Shane Gibson, Attorney for the City of New Albany

Two or three decent eggs, but not a single truly independent voice. It's the usual pay-to-play suspects and insider "economic development" yes-men. Think of it as a road map for partisan political payola from now until doomsday

Our friend Stephen adds this precise analysis:

It strikes me as odd, inappropriate, disappointing, insulting, thoughtless and more that a committee appointed to work on a comprehensive plan for the City of New Albany includes individuals who do not live in the city. At least one resides in another county. Impacts on this city's future need to be made by city residents. If they can't live here, they have no business "representing" those of us who do.

Jeff Gahan is remaking New Albany according to his "vision," and this should scare you far worse than Donald versus Hillary.

New Albany's new Comprehensive Plan to be happily midwifed by precisely the same old suspects.

I don't enjoy being the deliverer of Halloween nightmares.

Wait a minute -- yes I do.

New Albany drafting new city plan, by Madeleine Winer (Courier-Journal)

New Albany is asking for input on what its next 20 years of development will look like.

The city has started drafting a new comprehensive plan, which plots what improvements in transportation, housing, infrastructure and overall quality of life it would like to make over the next two decades. So far, the city worked with an engineering and development firm to create a rough draft of the plan and has hosted stakeholder and focus group meetings, said city spokesman Mike Hall.

“The comprehensive plan is a guiding tool and reference that we can use to help move New Albany forward for years to come," said Mayor Jeff Gahan in a statement. "By working together, we can ensure that we make New Albany the best city it can be for all of us, and we can work towards making our shared vision a reality."

Leading the plan's formation is a 13-person steering committee, consisting mainly of city officials, developers and redevelopment representatives. Engineering firms Bean Longest and Neff and HWC Engineers, both based out of Indianapolis, were hired to draft the plan. Both firms have also been hired to work on other city projects including converting some its one-way streets to two-way roads and the Mt. Tabor road restoration project.

Maybe this part will help you feel better.

Wendy Dant Chessler, steering committee member and president and CEO of One Southern Indiana, said her role on the committee is to think about what businesses' needs will be in the future and what development areas the city can help with. One Southern Indiana is the Chamber of Commerce for Clark and Floyd Counties with a good portion of its members with businesses in New Albany, she said.

"It gives us a clearer picture of what the community wants," she said, "and we figure out from there who to market it to to get those types of companies."

She said a big part of the plan is its zoning, which will determine what types of development can be built in certain areas of the city.

Apart from One Southern Indiana's familiar role as hen house fox with open palms, there's a familiar scorecard to update.

HWC Engineering: Gutted the Speck two-way plan ... remains the employer of the economic development director's wife ... now charged with writing a new comprehensive plan derived from the boilerplate input of the same old suspects.

And you think I'm kidding when I refer to this asylum as New Gahania?