ON THE AVENUES: Elusive sounds of silence.

Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
-- Eric Hoffer

---

Meet the new year; same as the old year. Then as now, most of my days begin with an earnest question.

What can I learn today that wouldn’t occur in a million years to the dullards who fancy themselves pillars of the community in New Albany, a place that Sinclair Lewis so scathingly documented almost a century ago?

Okay, so Lewis called the city Zenith, as located in the state of Winnemac, but his fiction is our daily reality in New Gahania.

Of course the act of reading anything -- books, fortune cookies, even Susan Duncan’s editorials -- would be enough to give almost anyone hereabouts a leg up on the high priests of low common denominators, and so the work I’ve chosen to begin the year is Charles Marohn’s long-awaited book, Strong Towns, which explains how to build healthy communities sustainably and incrementally, the old-fashioned way.

Marohn is a civil engineer who has dared question his profession’s hidebound premises, thus elevating a small-town Minnesotan into something of a church-door-nailing, Martin Luther-like annoyance to the encrusted inhabitants of engineering’s long corrupted “Vatican” of so-called best practices.

At this precise moment, the most entertaining thing I can imagine is the head of New Albany’s city engineering exploding into HWC-infused confetti after ten minutes over coffee with Marohn.

Surely Jeff Speck experienced the same thrill of witnessing sheer, unadulterated civic incomprehension when he met with city officials about the merits of a comprehensive street grid refit -- which they rejected in all but the barest of minimally propagandistic measures.

Rumor has it that when the River Heritage Conservancy got together with Mayor Jeff Gahan’s political patronage team to describe genuinely exciting plans for a world-class park unit astride the Greenway in Clarksville, the session didn’t go very well.

“It was like trying to talk to second-grade students,” one of the presenters is said to have commented afterward.

In other news, second-grade students are feeling mightily insulted these days.

---

Automobile supremacy surely is the most pervasive form of imperialism in human history, to the extent that most Americans never so much as consider the ubiquitous grip cars have on our lives.

In New Albany, we’re about to learn a hard lesson about automobile-centrism come spring of 2021, when the Sherman Minton undergoes repairs, to be rendered quite limited in terms of usefulness for as long as four years.

Ironically, 2021 also will be the tenth anniversary of the bridge’s first epileptic fit. Readers with long memories will recall the afternoon in 2011 when INDOT closed the Sherman Minton for emergency repairs, which lasted several months and thrust the insufferably trite term “Shermageddon” into the already stunted local commuter’s vocabulary.

But you may have forgotten the immediate, instantaneous effect of the bridge’s closure on downtown New Albany’s quality of life, a single auditory facet of which was enhanced immeasurably by car-centrism’s required surgical procedure.

Suddenly downtown became pervasively and somewhat eerily quiet.

Granted, local vehicular traffic still moved; planes still flew and boom cars spewed. Drunks bellowed and children shrieked, but the bridge’s shutdown removed a backing track of white noise, to which we'd all grown accustomed. All these "on the ground" sounds could be heard more clearly because the incessant daily hum emanating from the bridge abruptly disappeared.

Considering the realities of our addiction to cars, I can’t say the ensuing chaos was a good thing, although it bears repeating that people adapted rather quickly; humans can do this when there’s no other choice. As for me, walking and bicycling, I enjoyed the peacefulness, at least in relative terms.

When I see an image like this one, I can’t help wondering what daily life was like before the species became so damn noisy.

When New Albany really WAS a strong town.

Regular readers know how much I adore music, but even so there are portions of each day when I cherish silence just as much, whether reading, writing, walking or just resting. Less noise and clamor, just the relative serenity of one's own thoughts.

Is there a place for silence in the contemporary world? Sometimes I fear it's becoming extinct.

I seldom if ever “call out” local food and drink operators, seeing as I did my own bit in the biz as an owner, and continue to program beer (at Pints&union), and yet I’ll make an exception today, because I've come to loathe the modern trend of playing intrusive music OUTSIDE an establishment.

Look, you can do as you please inside even if I disagree, and continue to pine for the days when bars were places to have conversation, not witness floor shows. Display idiotic sports ball match-ups, book bands, belt out the karaoke -- whatever, it's all good -- but can’t you spare those of us merely walking past, dodging sandwich boards wrongly placed in the middle of the sidewalk, who enjoy the way things sound in the city without forcing your choice of tunes on the rest of us?

(By the way, whomever coined the idea of installing sound systems for motorcycles should be shot without trial. Think Trump could do just this one small service for us?)

---

As you can see, big changes take some getting used to, and so it is with my sabbatical from local affairs.

ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

Of course, my comments here, as well as a continued preference for the brilliantly descriptive, albeit satiric “New Gahania” instead of the geographically correct “New Albany,” serve as confirmation that I probably can’t ever let go of opinionation entirely, if only at a sort of maintenance level.

However, what I’m seeking are revisions to the broad terms of engagement with The Resistance. My writing time is being successfully reapportioned, with a big allotment going toward my web site duties (since last July) at Food & Dining Magazine. Another chunk will be devoted to writing about beer at the Pints&union website now that the site is active.

None of this is to be construed as implying that suddenly, magically, my thoughts will be neutered. I’m on sabbatical from involvement in public affairs insofar as participating as I’ve done in the past takes time I no longer have. This weekly column is one exception to any time-based abstinence I might otherwise observe.

Long-form writing once each week keeps the polemical muscles toned, you know.

However, if you want to chat about the prevailing New Gahanian lunacy over beers that I probably would have been drinking anyway, conversation’s not on the clock, is it?

And, if you feed me straight lines on Twitter, I'll toss off one-liners all day long; not only is this activity barbed, brief and factual, but it's great fun. The same goes for a few shots across the bow now and then at NA Confidential, although only if the time it takes to fire them is short.

Know that the blog remains at the disposal of those wishing to expound for an audience different from the one they normally address on social media.

The Green Mouse still wants to hear from you, and your submissions will be published here so long as they’re predominantly ready for prime time, with my contribution limited to light editing and an index finger primed to press the “publish” tab.

As for my middle finger, well, we’ll save it for truly special occasions.

---

Recent columns:

January 2: ON THE AVENUES: On patience, grieving, puzzles and a necessary sabbatical.

December 26: ON THE AVENUES: Four more years? Heaven help us all, but there are five reasons to be optimistic.

December 21: ON THE AVENUES HOLIDAY SPECIAL: Truth, lies, music, and a trick of the Christmas tale (2019 Remix).

December 19: ON THE AVENUES: These parents oppose their children's exposure to the PURE Initiative as part of the NA-FC Schools curriculum. Here's why.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Forever NA, the wrong way ... from 2012, through 2014, to 2016 and beyond, forever more.

ON THE AVENUES: Forever NA, the wrong way ... from 2012, through 2014, to 2016 and beyond, forever more.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

April, 2016 

Years pass. The Speck study has come and gone. As we speak, it is being distorted into unrecognizable gibberish by the engineering firm that employs the wife of the economic development director. Amid four years of rampant nothingness, the only concrete objective ever aired publicly by Jeff Gahan was his intention to take action prior to the advent of bridge tolls. Now, he's conceded that even that is beyond his abilities. There'll be campaign finance monetization. It's the only thing we can ever truly count on.

August, 2014

Last week I was reassured by a City Hall insider that all systems are "go", and that once Jeff Speck tells them what to do, and provides political cover accordingly, an amazingly comprehensive effort will commence, virtually overnight, to radically remake New Albany's streets.

This despite non-urban meister-planner John Rosenbarger's ongoing and bizarre personal conviction that quaint small-town ambiance and one-way arterial streets are somehow congruous.

I genuinely appreciate the time, explanations, maps and charts. At the same time, as a good friend pointed out just the other day ...

Isn't it queer that the individuals most supportive of walkability and 2-way traffic are the least optimistic that it will happen in New Albany? The top 10, the top 100, the top 1000 ... whatever set you choose, those are the ones who expect to be screwed again.

And sorry, but I do expect to be screwed again.

Yes, I believe some of these people believe what they're saying, but historically in New Albany, saying and doing are two completely different functions. Even if the Democratic Party permits one to believe in any platform of ideas differing from the iron imperative of localized patronage politics, bringing these beliefs to fruition requires character, individuality and courage of the sort that usually migrated long before the previous (or next) election.

Moreover, my persistent pessimism derives from the unwillingness of these very same people to say aloud what they disseminate by whispers in private. In my world, if you believe in something, you advocate for it -- you go all in -- and this has not been the case, and likely won't be.

Thanks, but look, I don't need convincing as to the efficacy of two-way, completed streets in New Albany; after all, I've been among those few openly urging street reform. City Hall's embargo on information does not an enlightenment campaign launch. The city could have been doing this for three years, and has chosen silence. I believe this is ominous.

Me? I need convincing that street grid reform actually will take place. That's where the soles of my shoes meet the road, and that's why this column from April, 2012, illustrates yet again how much time has been lost to the city's perennial, numbing, fear-laden conservatism.

April, 2012

It was a fairly deserted Saturday afternoon in downtown New Albany. At around 12:30 p.m., I was afoot near the northeast corner of Spring and E. 5th Streets, walking westbound. Doing so strikes me as perfectly ordinary, but in “Drive Thru City”, nothing’s ever as simple as seems.

I’ve recently concurred with suggestions that in L’America, walking by choice rather than fiscal constraint is a revolutionary act. Here in New Albany, there are further innate complications, such as determining where those relative few who really do walk the city streets actually place their feet.

One might sensibly imagine that sidewalks, which are conceived, constructed and maintained to accommodate walkers, would be the proper venue for walking. But in New Albany, the minority of bipeds not otherwise engaged in driving cars and motorcycles has an alarming tendency to wander onto the asphalt, often pausing in mid-avenue for lunch, cigarettes, high tea or random sex acts.

Of course, the garbage generated by these activities is deposited onto the street, although that’s another topic, for another day.

---

The old Coyle Chevrolet property basked in its peculiar open-air limbo to my immediate right as I drew closer to the crosswalk at 5th and Spring. I thought to myself: If the city father and mothers weren’t so busy fluffing and re-fluffing the penniless Mainland Properties cadre, something actually might become of the critically positioned Coyle acreage, which now is being used only as temporary housing for the fire museum (which probably can’t afford to buy it), storage for family yard-sale heirlooms, and as mute testimony to our eternally misplaced redevelopment priorities.

It is highly doubtful that any of these idle considerations were in the mind of the driver, southbound on 5th Street, whose sporty convertible approached the intersection just in front of me. Owing to the generalized distracted cluelessness of local drivers, I’m conditioned on a daily basis to personal vigilance and assumed the car would block my path at the crosswalk. Amazingly, it came to a stop behind the line. The driver was spot-on. He looked east, made eye contact with me, and then studied the one-way traffic on Spring coming toward him from the left.

However, he failed to look west (to his right), at least until he began to ease out onto Spring Street, when I saw his head suddenly jerk as he spotted the blithering idiot on his bicycle, merrily traveling eastbound in the westbound bike lane, against one-way vehicular traffic, despite the plain – if locally unobserved – fact that bicyclists are bound to observe the same traffic rules as motorists.

In truth, I’ve personally seen this particular vagrant bicyclist (he’s not out there for the exercise, boys and girls) traveling the wrong way on Spring Street so many times that I’ve lost count of them. I’m guessing the policeman who lately has been standing idly across Spring from my house monitoring traffic (is he intending to jog after the chronic speeders?) has spotted the wrong-way cyclist, too, but of course nothing ever happens, because after all, this is New Albany (“Enforce Not City”).

Fortunately for driver and bicyclist on Saturday afternoon at the intersection of 5th and Spring, nothing bad came of it. There was a good ten-foot gap between them, and both had time to stop and reassess the situation. The driver completed his right-hand turn onto Spring, and the bicyclist, a fiftyish man who lives in an apartment up the street from me, continued cycling the wrong way, just as he’d been doing prior to nearly causing an accident that would have injured him far worse than the convertible.

As for me, I just couldn’t take it. I called out at him: You know, dude, you’re going the wrong damned way, and it isn’t safe for anyone.

He merely laughed maniacally, rather like those folks who’ve long since ceased taking their meds, and kept right on going in the same direction.

So did I, so do the police, and so does City Hall. In reality, had this wrong way cyclist heeded my advice, it is likely he would have moved his two-wheeler to the sidewalk, which is yet another place an adult bicyclist should not be. Maybe that’s why the walkers end up lounging in the bike lane.

2016 insert: ADA compliance? You don't want to go there, and neither does City Hall.

---

We all routinely dismiss near misses and minor occurrences like the one recounted here, and because we do, nothing is done, and consequently, minor problems gradually escalate into bigger ones. Inevitably, there will be a collision, and when there is, all recent prevailing evidence in the metropolitan Louisville area indicates that the driver of the car won’t be prosecuted. The culture of automotive non-accountability will thus be perpetuated, to the further detriment of those who try to share the road.

And when this inevitable tragedy finally happens, I’ll rush to the laptop to channel my outrage into words, but something will nag me, namely my dozens of memories of similar occurrences, and the realization that however much I prefer denouncing incompetent, distracted and unfit motorists, who richly deserve censure, it’s also true that bicyclists and walkers are part of the problem … and the solution.

Ideally, we all should be able to share our use of city streets and sidewalks with some semblance of equality, but in order to do so, there must be a shared sense of responsibility – and as my own experience has shown, one person acting alone, trying to engage the chronically addled and errant, stands little chance of deterring non-constructive behaviors.

Right now, there isn’t any prevailing notion of responsibility when it comes to how walkers, riders and drivers interact, and no obvious plan to improve the prospects for it. New Albany streets are designed and maintained almost exclusively to appease the automobile, and so adult cyclists who either don’t now any better or are plain scared of traffic pedal against the grain, or get on the sidewalk. When is the last time anyone in a position of authority (i.e., wearing a uniform) made any of this clear to anyone?

Meanwhile, I still dream of the day when we, as a city, decide that humans are more important than their cars. Unfortunately, we may have to run out of petroleum before the discussion can begin.

---

April 7: ON THE AVENUES: The Six Session Beers of Session Beer Day.

March 31: ON THE AVENUES: Abortion? Wichita, or maybe Targu Mures.

March 24: ON THE AVENUES: Introducing New Albany Craft Beer Week, May 27 – June 4, 2016.

March 17: ON THE AVENUES: Erin Go Blagh -- a timeless classic for a green-hued holiday.

The Reagans and AIDS: “If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting."

Never, ever forget this.

The first lady who looked away: Nancy and the Reagans' troubling Aids legacy, by Maria L La Ganga (The Guardian)

As the nation mourns the former first lady’s death, those on the frontline of the 1980s Aids crisis remember something else: a couple who turned a blind eye

Between Nancy Reagan’s death and her funeral on Friday 11 March, the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence reached out in their own wimpled way to share their pain, their anger and, occasionally, their sympathy.

The activists, in trademark Catholic drag, spent the Aids crisis fighting on behalf of infected friends and lovers – and for dying men they would never know. As much of the nation mourned the former first lady’s passing this week, their email anguish underscored the Reagan administration’s darker legacy.

Ronald Reagan, who died in 2004, was president for nearly five years before he said the word “Aids” in public, nearly seven years before he gave a speech on a health crisis that would go on to kill more than 650,000 Americans and stigmatize even more.

In recent months, published reports have revealed an administration that laughed at the scourge and its victims and a first lady who turned her back on Rock Hudson, a close friend, when he reached out to the White House for help as he was dying from an Aids-related illness.

“If there is a hell both Ronny and Nancy are Roasting,” wrote one Sister.

Previously at NAC:

World AIDS Day, Randy Shilts, his book and why it matters.

ON THE AVENUES REWOUND: Forever NA, the wrong way.

ON THE AVENUES: Forever NA, the wrong way ... from April, 2012.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Last week I was reassured by a City Hall insider that all systems are "go", and that once Jeff Speck tells them what to do, and provides political cover accordingly, an amazingly comprehensive effort will commence, virtually overnight, to radically remake New Albany's streets.

This despite non-urban meister-planner John Rosenbarger's ongoing and bizarre personal conviction that quaint small-town ambience and one-way arterial streets are somehow congruous.

I genuinely appreciate the time, explanations, maps and charts. At the same time, as a good friend pointed out just the other day ...

Isn't it queer that the individuals most supportive of walkability and 2-way traffic are the least optimistic that it will happen in New Albany? The top 10, the top 100, the top 1000 ... whatever set you choose, those are the ones who expect to be screwed again.

And sorry, but I do expect to be screwed again. 

Yes, I believe these people believe what they're saying, but historically in New Albany, saying and doing are two completely different functions. Even if the Democratic Party permits one to believe in any platform of ideas differing from the iron imperative of localized patronage politics, bringing these beliefs to fruition requires character, individuality and courage of the sort that usually migrated long before the previous (or next) election.  

Moreover, my persistent pessimism derives from the unwillingness of these very same people to say aloud what they disseminate by whispers in private. In my world, if you believe in something, you advocate for it -- you go all in -- and this has not been the case, and likely won't be. 

Thanks, but look, I don't need convincing as to the efficacy of two-way, completed streets in New Albany; after all, I've been among those few openly urging street reform. City Hall's embargo on information does not an enlightenment campaign launch. The city could have been doing this for three years, and has chosen silence. I believe this is ominous.

Me? I need convincing that street grid reform actually will take place. That's where the soles of my shoes meet the road, and that's why this column from April, 2012, illustrates yet again how much time has been lost to the city's perennial, numbing, fear-laden conservatism.  

---

It was a fairly deserted Saturday afternoon in downtown New Albany. At around 12:30 p.m., I was afoot near the northeast corner of Spring and E. 5th Streets, walking westbound. Doing so strikes me as perfectly ordinary, but in “Drive Thru City”, nothing’s ever as simple as seems.

I’ve recently concurred with suggestions that in L’America, walking by choice rather than fiscal constraint is a revolutionary act. Here in New Albany, there are further innate complications, such as determining where those relative few who really do walk the city streets actually place their feet.

One might sensibly imagine that sidewalks, which are conceived, constructed and maintained to accommodate walkers, would be the proper venue for walking. But in New Albany, the minority of bipeds not otherwise engaged in driving cars and motorcycles has an alarming tendency to wander onto the asphalt, often pausing in mid-avenue for lunch, cigarettes, high tea or random sex acts.

Of course, the garbage generated by these activities is deposited onto the street, although that’s another topic, for another day.

---

The old Coyle Chevrolet property basked in its peculiar open-air limbo to my immediate right as I drew closer to the crosswalk at 5th and Spring. I thought to myself: If the city father and mothers weren’t so busy fluffing and re-fluffing the penniless Mainland Properties cadre, something actually might become of the critically positioned Coyle acreage, which now is being used only as temporary housing for the fire museum (which probably can’t afford to buy it), storage for family yard-sale heirlooms, and as mute testimony to our eternally misplaced redevelopment priorities.

It is highly doubtful that any of these idle considerations were in the mind of the driver, southbound on 5th Street, whose sporty convertible approached the intersection just in front of me. Owing to the generalized distracted cluelessness of local drivers, I’m conditioned on a daily basis to personal vigilance and assumed the car would block my path at the crosswalk. Amazingly, it came to a stop behind the line. The driver was spot-on. He looked east, made eye contact with me, and then studied the one-way traffic on Spring coming toward him from the left.

However, he failed to look west (to his right), at least until he began to ease out onto Spring Street, when I saw his head suddenly jerk to the right as he spotted the blithering idiot on his bicycle, merrily traveling eastbound in the westbound bike lane, against one-way vehicular traffic, despite the plain – if locally unobserved – fact that bicyclists are bound to observe the same traffic rules as motorists.

In truth, I’ve personally seen this particular vagrant bicyclist (he’s not out there for the exercise, boys and girls) traveling the wrong way on Spring Street so many times that I’ve lost count of them. I’m guessing the policeman who lately has been standing idly across Spring from my house monitoring traffic (is he intending to jog after the chronic speeders?) has spotted the wrong-way cyclist, too, but of course nothing ever happens, because after all, this is New Albany (“Enforce Not City”).

Fortunately for driver and bicyclist on Saturday afternoon at the intersection of 5th and Spring, nothing bad came of it. There was a good ten-foot gap between them, and both had time to stop and reassess the situation. The driver completed his right-hand turn onto Spring, and the bicyclist, a fiftyish man who lives in an apartment up the street from me, continued cycling the wrong way, just as he’d been doing prior to nearly causing an accident that would have injured him far worse than the convertible.

As for me, I just couldn’t take it. I called out at him: You know, dude, you’re going the wrong damned way, and it isn’t safe for anyone.

He merely laughed maniacally, rather like those folks who’ve long since ceased taking their meds, and kept right on going in the same direction.

So did I, so do the police, and so does City Hall. In reality, had this wrong way cyclist heeded my advice, it is likely he would have moved his two-wheeler to the sidewalk, which is yet another place an adult bicyclist should not be. Maybe that’s why the walkers end up lounging in the bike lane.

---

We all routinely dismiss near misses and minor occurrences like the one recounted here, and because we do, nothing is done, and consequently, minor problems gradually escalate into bigger ones. Inevitably, there will be a collision, and when there is, all recent prevailing evidence in the metropolitan Louisville area indicates that the driver of the car won’t be prosecuted. The culture of automotive non-accountability will thus be perpetuated, to the further detriment of those who try to share the road.

And when this inevitable tragedy finally happens, I’ll rush to the laptop to channel my outrage into words, but something will nag me, namely my dozens of memories of similar occurrences, and the realization that however much I prefer denouncing incompetent, distracted and unfit motorists, who richly deserve censure, it’s also true that bicyclists and walkers are part of the problem … and the solution.

Ideally, we all should be able to share our use of city streets and sidewalks with some semblance of equality, but in order to do so, there must be a shared sense of responsibility – and as my own experience has shown, one person acting alone, trying to engage the chronically addled and errant, stands little chance of deterring non-constructive behaviors.

Right now, there isn’t any prevailing notion of responsibility when it comes to how walkers, riders and drivers interact, and no obvious plan to improve the prospects for it. New Albany streets are designed and maintained almost exclusively to appease the automobile, and so adult cyclists who either don’t now any better or are plain scared of traffic pedal against the grain, or get on the sidewalk. But the sidewalk is for walkers. When is the last time anyone in a position of authority (i.e., wearing a uniform) made any of this clear to anyone?

Meanwhile, I still dream of the day when we, as a city, decide that humans are more important than their cars. Unfortunately, we may have to run out of petroleum before the discussion can begin.

“You have speed limits saying one thing and you have highway engineering saying another.”

Maybe someday, someone actually employed by the City of New Albany will find saying something about Jeff Speck's work here preferable to months of silence. Until then, we'll have to do some vicarious living via Albuquerque. Insert wrong turn jokes as necessary.

City planner poses big changes for downtown ABQ by Chris McKee (KRQE) 

Oklahoma City has done it, now Albuquerque is considering major changes so more people walk and bike downtown. 

A well-known city planner has some big ideas including changing one way streets to two-ways, and possibly getting rid of that center lane on Central Avenue. 

The ideas come from a man named Jeff Speck. He’s spent the last several years doing “walkability” studies in downtown areas across the U.S.. 

“Create an environment in which the sidewalks feel more comfortable for pedestrians but also bicyclists to feel more welcome,” said Speck. 

So far, Speck has done about 20 walkability studies. He says downtown Albuquerque’s streets are “easy” to change. 

“Not to give you a hard time but from a national standard, looking at best practices around the country, you (downtown Albuquerque) do have some of the most fixable streets that I’ve come across,” said Speck in an interview with News 13 on Thursday. 

Overall, Speck is suggesting taking some space away from cars downtown and giving it to pedestrians and bicyclists.

"No Tolls" vindication comes with poll results, as Clere Channel crickets continue to chirp.

The story is written by Marcus Green of the Courier-Journal.

We eagerly await responses (if any) from our trio of courageous local "defenders" in the Indiana legislature as to their feelings about this vivid and predictable confirmation of the way Hoosiers really have felt about tolls and the ORBP from the beginning.

I imagine we'll be scolded; after all, since the same legislators already have signed away control over the legal mechanisms in a bid to make tolls inevitable, we'll be told that tolls (taxes) are inevitable, and now we must selflessly and even heroically pay the daily toll tax so Kerry Stemler and the River Ridge oligopolies might thrive, even as Louisvillians cease traveling to the Sunny Side.

The absurdity of tolling has reached a deafening crescendo with the release of these poll results. Trouble is, those who are willfully deaf on ideological grounds cannot hear the sound of their constituents.

---

Ohio River bridge tolls show mixed support, poll finds


A public-opinion poll commissioned by a Southern Indiana foundation finds little satisfaction with elected officials and community leaders over their handling of the Ohio River Bridges Project — and mixed support for tolls to help pay for two new bridges.


The research, which was released Thursday morning by the Paul Ogle Foundation of Jeffersonville, Ind., also shows a lack of public backing for tolls on the Kennedy Bridge and overwhelming opposition to the prospect of tolls on the Sherman Minton and Clark memorial bridges.


The findings, based on interviews by Louisville-based Thoroughbred Research Group, show that 69 percent of those surveyed describe the bridges as a “somewhat” or “extremely” important project. In all, 46 percent said they “strongly favor” the project.


The research included landline and cell phone conversations with 875 adults in a nine-county area — Clark, Floyd, Harrison and Washington in Indiana; and Bullitt, Henry, Jefferson, Meade, Nelson, Oldham, Shelby, Spencer and Trimble in Kentucky.


Interviews were conducted between March 7 and March 12. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.3 percentage points.


The poll found that Hoosiers cross the Ohio River about four times more often than Kentucky residents. People living in Clark and Floyd counties in Indiana averaged about five trips — or 10 crossings — per week, while Louisville residents averaged slightly more than one such trip each week.


The $2.6 billion bridges project includes new bridges downtown and between Utica, Ind., and Prospect, along with a rebuilt Spaghetti Junction interchange, where Interstates 64, 65 and 71 meet near downtown Louisville. Indiana is in charge of building the eastern segment, while Kentucky will oversee the downtown portion.


Both states are aiming for construction to begin this year.


Specifically, half of those surveyed said they “moderately” or “strongly” supported the general concept of tolls to help pay for the project. Those who said they “strongly” favored tolls included 20 percent of all respondents and 12 percent of frequent commuters.


Among frequent commuters — someone who makes four or more cross-river round trips in a typical week — 35 percent categorically opposed tolls, while 17 percent opposed tolls but were open to changing their minds.


The poll found that among the three elements of the project, the East End Bridge received strong support from 69 percent of those surveyed, while the Spaghetti Junction work garnered 58 percent. Forty-seven percent gave the same level of support to building a new downtown bridge and turning the Kennedy Bridge into a southbound-only span.


In all, 61 percent favored removing the Drumanard Estate in eastern Jefferson County from the National Register of Historic Places. The historic designation forced project planners to propose a $261 million tunnel under the estate, which the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet has agreed to purchase.


Robert Lanum, a founder of the Ogle Foundation and a former president and CEO, was to speak about the poll Thursday morning in Jeffersonville. Lanum was formerly vice chairman of the Bridges Coalition, a group of business, government and labor groups that favors the bridges project, but spokesman Matt Kamer said the coalition wasn’t involved in the poll.

If Erika can do it, surely the literate ones can, too -- right?

Of the nine citizens currently serving on New Albany’s city council, all but two are standing for re-election.

Bev Crump (D-5th) and Larry Kochert (D-4th) are not seeking another term in office, although persistent rumors have “Slippery” Larry conniving at various independent, whacked-out, know-nothing or flat-earth candidacies if his handpicked successor, Roger Hefler, fails to dislodge presumptive favorite Pat McLaughlin.

Of the remaining seven council representatives, only one is unopposed in his party’s primary: Jeff Gahan (D-6th).

Three-quarters of the council’s Gang of Four obstructionists, including Dan Coffey, Bill Schmidt and Steve Price (all Democrats; 1st, 2nd and 3rd districts, respectively) face credible primary challenges.

This leaves the three at-large councilmen, who are the Democrats Jack Messer and Donnie Blevins, and the Republican Kevin Zurschmiede, the latter appointed to his seat after Mark Seabrook won a county commissioner slot in the 2006 election. Both parties are fielding multiple candidates on the spring primary at-large ballot.

You are being directed to these facts because previously we pointed readers to the Tribune candidate questionnaires, which appeared at the newspaper’s web site last week.

Apart from the mayor’s race, the Tribune’s policy is to not publish answers from unopposed candidates, which explains why platform planks from councilman Gahan, city clerk Marcey Wisman (D), 4th district candidate David Aebersold (R) and 5th district candidate Diane McCartin Benedetti (D) did not appear when the newspaper’s questionnaire results were published.

Accordingly, here is the complete list of candidates who also were absent, in this case by reason of not submitting the Tribune’s questionnaire by the mandated deadline:

6th: Sam Anderson (R)
At-large, Republican: Steve Burks, Tonye Rutherford
At-large, Democrat: Donnie Blevins, James Hollis, Jack Messer
City clerk: Ronny K. Hornung (R)

As a disclaimer, there might be many reasons for the omissions, and not all of them insidious or conspiratorial, ranging from simple forgetfulness to bad contact information, but ending at what we fervently hope isn’t the case: That the candidates in question are unwilling to go on the record, even with basic and forgettable electoral clichés of the sort dispensed by several of those who joined in the fun.

Time and again we have urged voters to give consideration to substantive issues somewhat beyond whether one’s aunt went to grade school with the wife of the candidate down the street. Whatever your take on the Tribune as a newspaper, it must be conceded that beyond a sprinkling of candidate blogs and a website or two, and with most non-mayoral candidates lacking printed campaign materials other than the unsightly litter known as yard signs, the Tribune’s questionnaires constitute the only real hope of gleaning a council candidate’s positions in the form of a lasting public record prior to the election.

It is especially disappointing that two sitting council members did not take part in the Tribune’s informational and educational exercise, but perhaps they merely missed the deadline, and if so, NAC is happy to offer blog space to Donnie Blevins, Jack Messer and the other candidates listed above to place their questionnaire answers on the public record, right here, prior to May 8.

E-mail the senior editor to schedule your time. We’d really like to hear from all of you. Your thoughts are important to voters, don't you think?