These useless crosswalk gadgets are Team Gahan's most wasteful expenditure ever -- at least BEFORE the prioritization of a luxury city hall.

If we disguise them as trees, perhaps David Barksdale will have the Tree Board commence another orgy of removal.

These useless "enhanced" (or "high visibility" -- but please, select your own code words for "this dog won't hunt") crosswalks are such an obvious and profound failure that even 3rd district councilman Greg Phipps grasps it, but because the error was cemented into place by the ruling clique to which Phipps is beholden, there cannot logically be a solution involving the councilman.

This would mean challenging Big Daddy G, and that's a good way to have the AdamBot kneecap your next campaign.

Maybe DNA can hang member advertising placards on them.

Crosswalk safety: Phipps goes on TeeVee; Summers gulps the Kool Aid. Jeff Speck had the street grid answers, but Jeff Gahan urinated on them. Unwalkable New Albany -- what a thrill!

 ... Focusing on the topic at hand, maybe Phipps is beginning to see that without Jeff Speck's principled approach to comprehensive street grid reform, two-way automotive friction alone cannot magically produce walkability -- and the majority of bicycle-friendly design components never made it past Gahan's ingrained cowardice.

Can you explain, Jeff Gillenwater?

"Greg Phipps and Larry Summers are both very aware that much more could have been done via this significant expenditure to protect against and start reversing auto-centric culture. It’s too bad both of them chose silence as a means of protecting their vaunted personal positions while a solid plan to do just that was being butchered by their boss. As lots of us have mentioned, two-way conversion as implemented is a bare bones step. Now we’ll have to spend years more and lots of additional money working toward eventually getting it right."

Jeff Gahan's predictably wasted opportunity to civilize Vincennes Street using Jeff Speck's sensible plan.

This text is pasted from Jeff Speck's landmark New Albany streets study, and now serves to remind us that from a glorious potential starting point of ribeye, we're left with a tiny puddle of fatty stew meat.

---

A Limited Mandate

The conclusions from this exercise are clear: downtown New Albany has the potential to become much more crowded with vehicles than it currently is, and the best way to protect against this overcrowding would be to reduce the Supply of downtown lanes to a number that is no greater than the current Demand.

However, as dramatic as this recommendation would sound, it actually has a very limited impact, since so few of New Albany’s streets are more than two lanes wide.

As will be discussed ahead, two-way traffic is superior to one-way traffic for both safety and city vitality, and a conversion of many streets back to two-way traffic will be recommended. This means that only those streets of more than two lanes are candidates for reduction. Within the study area, that condition applies to significant stretches of only the following streets: Vincennes, Market, and Spring.

Within the study area, Vincennes is the easiest street to discuss, because it contains a strange extra northbound lane, creating a 3-lane capacity on a road carrying only slightly more than one lane’s worth of traffic. It also has a massive 5-lane cross-section at its intersection with Main Street, despite its low car counts. Eliminating the extra northbound lane and the unnecessary right-hand turn lane at the Main Street intersection will result in a safer street that is still sized well beyond its current volume would demand.

Vincennes Street

Vincennes Street’s asymmetrical section contains an additional northbound lane that is not justified by traffic demand.

Current Condition
From half a block north of Spring Street to Main Street, Vincennes Street consists principally of a three-lane section, with additional right-hand turn lanes inserted at Spring Street and Main Street, and an additional southbound lane added at Main. This 3-lane section is striped with two lanes northbound and one lane southbound, as if the northbound flow were dominant, but it is not. Hourly traffic counts on Vincennes peak at 490 north of Main, 812 north of Market, and 654 north of Oak.

Analysis
Vincennes Street is clearly oversized for its traffic. At no point do car accounts approach the number that would require a third lane. This condition is supported by the fact that the third lane, rather then being striped for left turns, merely provides northbound redundancy with no southbound counterpart.

Acknowledging that a two-lane section is ample south of the busy Spring Street intersection allows the extra northbound lane to be replaced by a wider parking aisle on that side, holding angled parking instead of parallel. Given that Vincennes is a desired bike route, this parking should be back-in, and sharrows should be placed in the roadway.

As it approaches Main Street, the tapered cross section gains additional width that should be put to used as a center turn lane, with other lanes (including the parking lane) widening slightly in order to use up the extra asphalt.

Recommendation
From Division to Stone, restripe Vincennes to include 8-foot parallel parking on its western curb and 17-foot back-in angle parking (at 60 degrees) on its eastern curb. South of Stone, as the street widens, insert a 12-foot left-hand turn lane, and broaden the parking bays to 10 feet and 18 feet respectively. Insert sharrow markings in roadway near each intersection.

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.

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.

In which Patrick Duffy steps from the shower, and Bob Caesar lovingly French-kisses petrochemical fascists.

There was a council meeting last night.

In it, two-way street conversions were discussed, even though neither measure considered was even remotely necessary, because the mayor does not need council involvement to rationalize the street grid, except evidently City Hall does not intend to expend its own political capital to pursue what it says it supports despite making no public comments in favor of it, and when it comes right down to it, someone in the administration really needs to read this memo I wrote. Where the hell is John Galt when you need him?

Meanwhile, reporter Daniel Suddeath strives mightily to make sense of the evening's needless muddle here.

Or, you can read my tweets. Spoiler warning: There is jaundice and dolt fatigue throughout.

As an aside, last night we learned to no great surprise that Bob Caesar, who somehow avoids being hit by retributive ideological lightning while still referring to himself as a Democrat, capital-D, bases his "lost cause" defense of 1950s-era roadway planning and the white bread social order entirely on the wit and wisdom of the Thoreau Institute.

This is rather like an anti-Semite citing The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as justification for an internal noggin irrationality for which permanent cures don't presently exist, although lobotomies remain an option -- for those of us forced to listen to the sheer drivel.

Yes, it can be depressing living in this monument to underachievement.

Certain of these elected "leaders" gaze at us -- at the year 2013, at modernity itself -- with an abject and bottomless incomprehension, even sometimes the ones who might on occasion know better. New Albany remains in the perfect position to be an exciting, groundbreaking laboratory for urban change. The ones who know this mostly just sit there and say nothing for fear of ... well, of what?

And the ones who do not possess the imagination to grasp change are the ones we permit to make the decision. The decades-long search for political cojones in New Albany goes on and on, but in a place where ignorance is considered the ultimate virtue, perhaps those particular balls simply never will be launched into the air.

Will some one wake me when the clock strikes disinvestment time?

Bike commuting workshop: "Diversity of roadway use can be restored with conscious policy decision."

Just imagine if one of several year-long themes of New Albany's bicentennial celebration would have been "back to the future" in the context of topics precisely like this one (bicycling, street usage and the urban grid).

Think how the money spent on the celebration would have been twice as useful, because it would have helped to raise consciousness about lives to come.

Ponder how instead, we've had living white people focusing almost entirely on dead white people. It's been such a profound, sad waste of time and money, purposefully placed outside the realm of accountability.

See Eric Vance Martin's slide show at the Floyd Action Network web site.

Maybe we still have time to pull something hopeful form the mire.

The important take away:

"Conscious policy decisions got us where we are. Conscious policy decisions can get us where we want to be. Each of us can influence the decisions if we let our public officials and the media know what we want and what we don't want."

"

Aquatics: More on less.

First, a reposting of the $3.5 million aquatics center site plan from Marion, Ohio, shared here recently. One of the most noteworthy features isn't in the image but in the branded text: the architectural firm who helped make the low cost happen, Brandstetter Carroll Inc, has a Louisville office. It might be worth a phone call before handing the full set of keys to The Estopinal Group.

Second, it's also worth noting that not every community manages to build an aquatic center similar to New Albany's proposal for as little as $3.5 million. Some spend more, as shared below.

Joplin, MO

The Schifferdecker Family Aquatic Center in Joplin replaces an aging pool much like in New Albany. It maintains most of the features in New Albany's plan but also includes a full size 50 meter pool as some residents here have requested. It will be open within the next couple weeks.  
Total Cost: $5.3 million


Leitchfield, KY

The Leitchfield Aquatic Center plan is very similar to New Albany's in that it lacks a full 50 meter pool and focuses a bit more on the splashy elements. It's being placed on a previously undeveloped site so all supporting infrastructure like entrances, parking lots, and buildings will have to be built from scratch. New Albany's plan includes the use of some preexisting Camille Wright infrastructure, explained as a money saver. Leitchfield sold $4.9 million in bonds a few weeks ago to cover construction costs. $400,000 was added to the overall budget to cover a slightly higher than projected interest rate and to lower annual payments by $10,000 per year. Officials expect the center to open in 2014.  
Total cost: $5.3 million

Lacking a full size pool and reusing some preexisting infrastructure, New Albany's non-bid, Estopinal aquatics plan has been approved for a total cost of up to $9 million.

Water on the brains: Much less for far more will keep us swimming in it.

Since the serious prospect of a new municipal swimming pool or aquatic center was made public in New Albany, several people, though not elected officials or most media types, have issued numerous, relevant questions.

Roger did a fine job, for instance, of asking how or why an aquatics-based project fits with quality of life justifications, particularly when more pressing quality issues, some of which are much less expensive to address and more costly not to, stand mostly ignored.

Likewise, Sam Schad and his group asked why, with such a huge expenditure, we can't at least get increased utility from such a facility if we're going to build it anyway without the sort of considerations Roger suggests.

Somewhere in-between the two, I mused that whether the expenditure would be worth it or not would depend largely on what was ultimately and comprehensively delivered-- hardly a profound concept but one too readily dismissed by too many current decision makers. Given the vast amount of money then proposed and now doubly approved, I foolishly held out hope that council voices would rightfully point out that, for the price, we should be able to produce an aquatic center and a competitive lap pool and the reclamation of our two-way streets and perhaps some other potential initiatives.

Why did/do I think that? Because, apparently unlike some voluntarily voiceless council members, I bothered with a smidgeon of research into how comparable cities have handled comparable situations.

Marion, Ohio, is one such city. Its population of just under 37,000 is almost exactly the same as New Albany's. Marion, too, had an aging pool - a very common predicament nationwide - in a setting of roughly the same land space as Camille Wright: one that needed either substantial rehabilitation or replacement if the city decided to maintain a facility at all.

Conversation in Marion was somewhat similar to ours here as well.  Like New Albany, there were discussions of the overall usefulness of such a facility and whether or not it would cash flow. Totally unlike New Albany, there was even legitimate debate about proposed costs. Finally, Marion's city council online.com/uncategorized/2011/06/council-overrides-veto-of-aquatic-center/">overrode a cost driven mayoral veto to build an aquatic center, depicted below via text and images from online.com/">Marion Online and the aquatic center's Facebook page. It opened last summer, 2012, and has since online.com/news/2013/03/marion-aquatic-center-earns-state-award/">won a state award for recreation facilities.

"The new center will feature heated water, Lazy River, Floating Lilly Pads, Zero-depth entry, 25 foot Racing Slides, a 6 foot Family Slide, a Water Play set with a bucket that dumps 150 gallons of water, 25 meter 6 lane pool with a high dive and low dive and a separate baby pool."

 

It indeed appears to be a very nice facility that's been well received by the community. 

Here's the rub: That debate about cost that led to both a mayoral veto and a council override? It was a fight over whether to spend $2.4 million or $3.5 million. The council favored the 3.5 and won. 

All the above- much of it strikingly familiar - was built within the past couple of years for less than half of even the most conservative cost estimate provided by the administration and approved by the council for New Albany's impending center. Assuming we're not purposefully overspending for nefarious political purposes, New Albany could have something very similar and $4 - 5.5 million left over to address other quality of life needs without spending any more than what's already been approved.

Making that possible, though, requires a majority of council members who think beyond mayoral and Estopinal suggestions and consider such basic, comparative due diligence a part of their job. In terms of what our council has thus far publicly offered up relative to aquatic center merits, the one direct comparison offered here - easily gleaned from about 30 minutes of individual research - unfortunately represents more than our council members have collectively put forth over several months. 

The quantity and quality of discourse around numerous "park" projects has been so low and the prices so high that, if I didn't know some of the folks involved personally, I'd probably just assume they were receiving substantial kickbacks for such a dubious (lack of) effort. I don't believe that, but the lack of diligence has been egregious enough to make it a plausible explanation to fill an obvious void.

One would think (or at least I did) that the public embarrassment of a $750,000 downtown pocket park with less utility and flexibility than a $200,000 park could've offered and/or tens of thousands so casually given to a Bicentennial Commission who clearly told council members they had "no idea" how the money would be used before being granted funding should have been sufficient cause for a slightly more thoughtful approach in considering the aquatics expenditure. But, then, I already admitted to being foolishly optimistic.

If any of the council "yes" voters would like to explain exactly which portion of our proposed aquatic center justifies multiple, additional millions as compared to what we can plainly observe here, the floor is open. It's been open for months. Until any such rational, evidence-based explanation materializes, however, "rubber-stamp" criticisms will ring truer than usual for a group who, via the intelligence of its individual members, ought to know much better. 

As an overall experience, our current council group has in ways been even more frustrating than some of the lesser moments of the Kochert-led era that served as my introduction to New Albany politics. During that time, a distinct lack of intellectual capital coalesced with an abundance of insider bullying to render capacity so low as to substantially limit both expectations and actual potential. 

But that's not the case here. What we have now is an example of "won't" rather than "can't" in which acquiring council seats has somehow rendered usually talented people into an amorphous mass of counterproductive group decline. The sum is less than its parts. No one is consistently demonstrating their capacity for good questions, so we're settling for lousy, injudicious answers and losing badly.

So far, a bunch of really smart people have managed to haphazardly waste millions in public funding without so much as addressing some fundamental quality of life and prioritization issues. If such behavior continues unchecked by any number of council members quite capable of checking it, future councils and the city at large will have a much more difficult time responding to those issues as we try to dig ourselves out of holes already dug, some quite literally, at places like Bicentennial Park and the aquatics center. 

As a citizen and voter, I've always felt it important to extend at least some effort toward helping ensure that we elect as talented a group of leaders as possible. This council, however, with its inexplicable yet seemingly automatic brainpower off switch - apparently activated by the doors at city hall - is calling that premise into question. 

An unexamined "yes" is no better and sometimes worse than an ignorant "no" in that it actively reduces opportunities rather than just passively ignores them. In short, all this "no-brainer" malarkey when it comes to water features is costing us a lot of money that could easily be better spent but which we'll never get back. 

We've seen several frighteningly unthinking financial decisions from this council lately that, taken together, set quite a negative precedent that should be and, since no aquatics contracts have been let, can be immediately corrected before yet another boondoggle becomes a part of their permanent record.