Bob Lane will serve as interim director of the South Bend Housing Authority, making Jeff Gahan's dismissal of Lane even more questionable.

Bob Lane, director of the New Albany Housing Authority for 16 years, didn't pass muster with the petulant Genius of the Floodplain, but he's plenty good enough to have a thriving consultancy, and now to help stabilize the mess in South Bend left behind by a director who appears to have been just as corrupt as Gahan.

And, by sheer coincidence, it's the city steered in absentia by Pete Buttigieg, centrist darling of the ideologically vacuous Gahanites.

There might be a compelling message there, somewhere, but the recurring stench of Gahan's incumbency keeps clogging the nostrils.

Housing authority hires interim director, but still won't say why former director was fired, by Caleb Bauer (South Bend Tribune)

SOUTH BEND — The South Bend Housing Authority board named a new interim director, a month after firing the former head under mysterious circumstances amid a pair of ongoing federal investigations.

Bob Lane, who was the director of the New Albany Housing Authority for 16 years and now runs a public housing consulting firm, will take over as interim director. The board approved a contract with him running through December as it plans to conduct a national search for a permanent executive director.

Previous Executive Director Tonya Robinson was fired last month after the FBI and other federal law enforcement informed the oversight board of “serious” misconduct allegations, the board previously said.

Earlier this year, the FBI raided the housing authority’s office and other properties in South Bend. The Department of Housing and Urban Development inspector general’s office is also investigating the public agency.

Lane’s hire comes with the recommendation of HUD Region V administrators, the division which oversees housing authorities in Indiana, said board President Virginia Calvin.

In 2017, Lane was fired after 16 years as head of the New Albany Housing Authority in southern Indiana. He said pending litigation prevented him from speaking specifically on his dismissal.

According to local media reports and Lane’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against the New Albany Housing Authority, Lane was fired after expressing skepticism of a plan to demolish more than 600 units of public housing in the city. A complaint filed by Lane in Marion Superior Court last year alleges board of commissioner members “apparently became disenchanted with him in the wake of Lane’s assessment of the City of New Albany’s 13-point plan with (the New Albany Housing Authority) to restructure its public housing.”

“Even though Lane had expressed concern with several of the points, he never subverted the Board’s authority nor stated he would not comply with the Board’s decision,” the legal document states.

Following his firing, reports noted residents were shocked at his firing and that the new director of the housing authority violated HUD regulations and orders relating to oversight of the authority’s finances.

According to public records, the New Albany Housing Authority was rated by HUD as a “high performer” in the years immediately prior to Lane’s firing. In an interview, he said the authority had never been scored as “troubled” during his 16 years there. South Bend Housing Authority was scored as “troubled” by HUD in four out of the five years from 2013 to 2017.

The South Bend authority has been plagued in the past by financial reporting problems, poor inspection results and sub-par living standards in public housing units ...

Don't forget it was Jeff Gahan who raised your sewer rates.

In 2017 Jeff Gahan's sewer board ... and make no mistake, it's a sewer board in Gahan's vise grip ...

Jeff Gahan pays himself around $11,000 each year to head up the sewer board. Shouldn't Gahan attend the city council rate increase hearing on February 6 and listen to public comments?

... asked city council to raise sewer rates.

TONIGHT: Public hearing to discuss the sewer rate increase (and yes, it is an increase).

Yes, Virginia, it is a sewer rate INCREASE, in spite of what you may have read elsewhere.

Bump? Hike? If sewer rates are higher, then that's an increase, by definition.

City council complied, but it would be sophistry to suggest these annual sewer rates increases were not applied at Gahan's behest, or that they're anything other than a tax increase on Gahan's watch.

A week or so ago Slick Jeffie began attacking Mark Seabrook for raising sewer rates, which raised more than a few jaded eyebrows. Exactly how does a county commissioner have control over a sewer utility process controlled lock, stock and barrel by the mayor?

Jeff Gillenwater explains.

The reference is to Seabrook’s time as a City Council Representative. He did vote for sewer rate increases at the time as the City faced an EPA mandate to perform sewer system upgrades that had been needed but neglected for decades.

What they’re not saying: The sewer rate increases were championed by then Democratic Mayor Doug England and passed by a Democratic majority Council.

As a minority member, Seabrook voted WITH the Democrats. Then Councilman Gahan voted against, railing against the sewer department as corrupt but while offering no repair or upgrade alternatives other than personal grandstanding as the City faced potential fines and legal action from the EPA.

Fast forward a few years: Mayor Gahan appoints himself as president of the sewer board (a paid position in addition to his mayoral salary) and tries to take public credit for paying down sewer upgrade debt even though he consistently voted against the plan to do the work and pay down the debt.

In review, Floyd County Democrats now say that Seabrook is awful for having voted with a Democratic majority on the Council and a Democratic Mayor. Likewise, Gahan said the sewer plan that the Democratic majority and Seabrook voted for was horrible right up until it started to work as designed and he took public credit for it.

An addendum from Bluegill:

And lest any local Democrats again try to falsely accuse honest folks of lying, here’s the official, straight from the mayor’s office public appeal from Gahan (acting as both mayor and paid sewer board leader) requesting the passage of an ordinance that seeks to raise sewer rates on an annual basis. Gahan can argue that it’s a good idea to raise those rates but a) laying sewer rate increases at Seabrook’s feet while his own party is most responsible and b) trying to act as though he doesn’t support regular sewer rate increases himself are just more lies from an all too common source.

And these explanations are why I no longer trust local DemoDisneyDixiecrats to tell the truth, or the local chain newspaper to bother performing its historical function of setting the record straight.

Accordingly, this is why NA Confidential exists, and when it comes to determining why local DemoDisneyDixiecrats detest NA Confidential, Occam's Razor is the best source for the answer because the simplest answer is best: They hate me because I tell the truth about them.

In closing, lots of Gahan's supporters profit from his stewardship of the sewer board, don't they?

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Last week was so much fun, I did it again.

As a run-up to Decision 2019, again this week I delved into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five more days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the anchor-imbedded Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the solid case for Mark Seabrook as mayor.

The case against Gahanism has so many chapters that it might be necessary to lob five additional informative and entertaining installments next week. After all, heaven knows we have enough raw material.

Following are this week's and last week's Rice Krispies MisTREATments:

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

And this week's "please let there be a pink slip" chronicles:

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Monday) No more fear, Jeff. This isn't East Germany, and you're not the Stasi.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Tuesday) In 2015 roughly 14% of New Albany's eligible voters opted for the Anchor Deity, and they’re getting exactly what they deserve – good and hard.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Wednesday) When he seized NAHA, Slick Jeffie depicted himself as a wise, caped, fatherly hero, when in fact he was more two-faced than Harvey Dent.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Thursday) Slick Jeffie's car-centric street grid remains designed to maim and kill, and his clique doesn't give a damn.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Friday) Jeff Gahan fired NAHA's Bob Lane to promote David Duggins, but now it's time for voters to do some firing of their own at the ballot box.

Today we return to Gahan's 2017 public housing putsch, which remains the single greatest indicator of his fundamental unsuitability to serve New Albany as mayor.

At the time, several DemoDisneyDixiecrats were scandalized by Gahan's hostile takeover and concurring promise to demolish living spaces as a way of purging the city of poor people who have failed to budget properly and thus failed contribute their fair share to the Genius of the Floodplain's bulging campaign finance coffers (demolition is an effort that stalled yet stands to regain lost momentum if he succeeds in securing a third term).

Many of those who dissented have since groveled returned to the fold -- because ya know, the Re-Pubs are always worse. Some might even be in this photograph of protesters from early 2017.

Here's some eye candy.

Now for the words. As we know, NAHA director Lane was fired and Deputy Dawg Duggins brought aboard to make an experienced administrator's salary absent an iota of qualifications -- when he wasn't "joking" about Tasers and various other forms of physical violence -- but of course, the idea wasn't ever that Duggins actually would run NAHA (Tony Toran does THAT boring work) but instead wheel, deal and leverage properties like a Trump lackey to keep the special interest campaign donors pumping green lifeblood into Gahan's veins.

Mission accomplished ... unless you're a public housing resident.

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March 16, 2017

Burger Chef and Jeff? No, it's TIF Man and Warren.

ON THE AVENUES: It's all so simple, says Jeff Gahan. Remove the impoverished, and voila! No more poverty!

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

It was another vintage week for home-wrecking and game-playing by the tittering, braying donkeys who populate Team Gahan's toxic bunker bullpen (surely they're possessed of a remarkable consistency, if nothing else noteworthy), but let's try to disregard the latest round of slapstick and self-parody, and look instead at the purported blueprint for a "balanced mix of public and subsidized housing."

It is revealed within the recent, artfully contrived Comprehensive Plan, a Disneyesque document written by many of the same malleable functionaries now fairly itching to seize the controls of their testosterone-charged bulldozers, which currently idle nervously for the signal to VAROOM.

Bullet points "a" and "b" are sufficiently vague as to be nonsensical.

We know from long, repetitive experience that the desired Gahanian context for terms like these can be summarized in a sentence.

City Hall encourages you to redistribute a percentage of your lucrative new contract to the Gahan for Life fund, and we can assist in extracting your wallet if mandatory tithing is a burden.

Furthermore, if the objective of public housing demolitions is to reduce density, improve the condition of surviving units and geographically distribute new construction (the latter is thoroughly dubious), why target Riverside Terrace for destruction?

Riverside's units are many blocks away from the densest concentration of public housing, and make up some of the NAHA’s newest and best maintained buildings.

Location, location ... LOCATION. Riverside Terrace has the misfortune of being situated within a healthily-lofted Duggins spitball of Loop Island Wetlands, which straddles the Greenway and is envisioned by city planners as potentially rivaling New York City’s Central Park in sheer, “Are you fucking kidding me or what?” grandeur.

They must be spiking the Kool-Aid with LSD.

Point "c" is an example of classic Gahanite circular reasoning. These "recommendations" are not to be found in the detailed program already devised by the professional, trained staff of the New Albany Housing Authority, but rather as stipulated in the form of demolition-friendly reductions forced on the NAHA by means of a daintily termed Memorandum of Understanding, a writ of annexation slated for approval by a board packed by the mayor with the usual servile sycophants, as fully intended to render the result Gahan has fixed in advance.

---

The scant slivers of meat on these otherwise bleached bones are to be found in points "d" and "e."

First comes the soothing panacea of "voucher-based units," which numerous local social service agencies already have publicly testified as being non-existent, at least in numbers sufficient to re-house public housing residents facing eviction.

Because Deaf Gahan and Donald Trump might be twins as it pertains to a genetic predisposition to ignore dissenting expertise, perhaps the testimony of an ordinary human being would be useful in making this fact clear.

Hmm.

Did Gahan even once bother speaking with any real people before pursuing his hygienic “reforms” on their behalf?

I'm one of those tenants with a Section 8 voucher. I've been trying to find a new place to live for over a year. Pickings are slim and coming up with the deposit on a limited income is nearly impossible. Now I'm afraid to let go of what I have, however unsuitable it is for my needs. Fortunately, I only have to be concerned about me. I don't have kids to bring into the mix. I can't imagine how much that situation would make you worry. You are very correct about low income folks being insecure about their housing, just as they are insecure about having enough food. I am a registered democrat and I do not support this administration and their agenda. This town smells fishy to me. From Breakwater to Housing Authority demolition and a few things in between. Maybe it's the river, maybe not...

Ah, yes. Speaking of the Breakwater, our flame-broiled but defiantly bocce-clad shining avatar of Gahan’s imagined “democratic” mission to bring pure top-shelf living to New Albany, we now must be reminded that luxury and affordability are not incompatible, at least on Fantasy Island.

e. When the City of New Albany is a partner in the development of housing through public incentives, a total of 8 percent of the units shall be affordable.

This empty promise should suffice for years of uproarious hilarity on the part of city officials observing it in the breach.

You’ll notice that this affordability component is applicable only to housing the city already has chosen to subsidize, implying that we’re not going to be having a discussion about this particular form of odious corporate welfare, either.

Moreover, an instructive example of what can go wrong in times of toothlessness is to be found across the mighty Ohio, where Greg Fischer, Gahan’s go-to manly man and political idol, has become the absolute master of gesture politics without content.

As Caitlin Bowling of Insider Louisville explains, a potential out-of-town recipient of public "incentive" largess is balking at the notion of an affordability component, insisting that if a mere 18 out of 272 luxury units are discounted, it simply can’t go forward with the project.

An out-of-town developer may back out of plans to build a $56 million luxury apartment complex in NuLu, according to the developer’s attorney, Jeffrey McKenzie, of Bingham Greenebaum Doll.

“Flournoy Cos. is frankly not able to go forward,” McKenzie said when addressing members of the Louisville Metro Council’s Labor and Economic Development Committee Tuesday afternoon. The council was set to vote on a tax incentive agreement between the city and Flournoy Cos. but instead tabled it.

The Georgia-based company has asked the city for just more than $5 million in potential tax incentives, and in return, city officials told Flournoy Cos. that it must include 18 workforce housing units in its development at 700 E. Main St. and 121 S. Clay St.

The workforce housing request is part of an initiative by Metro Council leaders to ensure that there is housing affordable to residents who earn 80 percent of the area median income for Jefferson County. Teachers and police officers are often given as examples of people who would benefit from workforce housing.

Flournoy Cos. previously agreed to rent 18 of its one-bedroom apartments at $947 per month, whereas a regular one-bedroom unit would go for $1,300 a month.

However, when McKenzie addressed the council committee Tuesday, he stated that the project can’t move forward if Flournoy Cos. is required to have the 18 cheaper apartments. Either that requirement would need to be eliminated, or the property owner, Service Welding & Machine Co., must agree to sell the properties on Main and Clay streets at a lower price.

Let’s hope Fischer goes full gesture. That'll show 'em.

---

You may recall that on Monday, there was to have been a pre-rigged housing board vote on the memorandum of annexation, but the measure was tabled.

Initial media reports implied cold feet on City Hall’s part, though soon enough a defensive press release was emitted, with Gahan making sure the world knew it was director Bob Lane’s illness and not his own agoraphobia to blame for the delay.

Concurrently, deputy dawg and down-low soothsayer Mike Hall covered for a typically absent Gahan here:

Mike Hall, a spokesperson for the mayor's office, said in an email, "The MOU recognizes that much of the public housing stock in New Albany is poorly located, does not reflect current thinking and best practices in housing assistance, and is not in good condition."

Principled opposition makes them testy, doesn’t it? The newspaper reporter released this overview, clarifying matters.

New Albany Housing Authority board pushes back reduction plan to April meeting, by Elizabeth Beilman (Cooking School Chronicle)

Executive Director asks for delay to prepare comments

NEW ALBANY —A plan to reduce the New Albany Housing Authority's stock has been pulled from tonight's board meeting agenda, at the request of Executive Director Bob Lane.

A vote on the plan, originally scheduled for 5:30 p.m., will now be held April 10. The 10-year plan initiated by New Albany city officials that would result in a reduction of more than half of the housing authority's stock and redevelopment and relocation of several others.

Lane, who has been on sick leave for the past two weeks because of emergency eye surgery, said he has not had the time to prepare his comments on the proposed plan. He expects to have a response ready to the city by March 24.

"The City of New Albany and the New Albany Housing Authority worked together for months to draft a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on the future of public housing in New Albany," a city news release stated. "The City was hopeful that it would have been adopted tonight at 5:30 p.m. during the New Albany Housing Authority’s regularly scheduled meeting."

Alas, with dreary and numbing predictability the editorial board already had changed into water sports attire and jumped on Gahan’s wrecking ball bandwagon with a bizarrely worded essay about the need to smash things up right away … but please be careful and make sure the flying bricks don’t hurt anyone as they queue for the cattle cars?

Of course, all but one of the editorial board’s contributing members live outside New Albany; sole local Chris Morris is always ready to shine the shoes of elected officials, and it’s never clear whether Gahan is in Bill Hanson’s pocket, or the other way around.

Looking for the world’s worst topic sentence? Try this one:

There are too many public housing units in New Albany. Most would agree with that statement.

Really?

Doesn't it depend on how we define “too many” and “most”?

You won’t be surprised to learn that the editorial board proffers no evidence to support this opening bit of fawning hearsay fluffery, although weirdly and completely inadvertently – like your dog managing to catch the occasional car – the newspaper stumbles onto a point even if it can’t recognize what it is.

That’s because New Albany has absolutely no idea whether most, some or none of its residents agree, as this question hasn’t once been aired publicly, now or ever.

Rather, the entirety of public expertise on public housing  in New Albany remains stuck in a lily-white 1980s time warp, with decades of tall tales and folk “wisdom” emanating from the upstanding suburban folks, and sufficing for those pesky facts that Gahan and the editorial board duck as if they were rotten fruit.

It’s an abysmal information gap, and Gahan is exploiting it not so much in the sense of ethnic cleansing, but of low-income cleansing. Like generations of conclusion-jumpers before him, he has hitched the cart in front of the horse and declared that the overt existence of safety nets like public housing is the cause of unsightliness -- not the poverty, because he can't bring himself to admit that such a thing as poverty exists in his city, and so he's quite sure that if we stop treating symptoms, the disease will vanish, just like in one of his beloved Uncle Walt’s animated features.

And anyway, what good are poor people if they neither vote nor give often enough to Big Daddy’s campaign finance war chest?

Nick Vaughn said it best (and also elaborated on the problem):

The proposed plan spearheaded by Mayor Gahan would effectively demolish nearly half of the affordable housing units in New Albany in the hopes that low-income housing becomes less centralized. I am against this proposal and I am writing in the hopes that not only the Housing Authority and city officials see this, but also to help my fellow New Albanians become more aware of the growing crisis in our city called poverty.

In the end, amid the intellectual squalor, there is only one inexplicable development in this absurd and discouraging tale. Why didn’t Gahan name his demolition proposal The World’s Greatest Poverty Eradication Plan of 2017?

Wait -- I forgot another.

How can Gahan be considered a Democrat?

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2019 Election Appendix

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

The curious question of 3rd district candidate Alex Bilbrey's yard signs.

No joke: Alex Bilbrey will need to be Superman to beat Greg Phipps.

It's hard to imagine Bilbrey (R) breaking 40% of the vote in the 3rd council district against two-term incumbent Phipps (D); after all, the 3rd district is to pretend-progressive Kool Aid as Porto is to vintage port wine, and Bilbrey -- who registered to run at the last possible minute without the knowledge of his party's chairman -- has been all but invisible for the entirety of 2019.

Except for yard signs.

I've seen several, including one of the big honking signs behind my house at the auto repair shop, and this makes Bilbrey's CFA-4 campaign finance disclosures very curious.

Bilbrey reports that he has neither raised nor spent a dime.

How then did he pay for the signs?

No matter; never mind -- you know, like Gahan's platform.

Yes, conscience precludes a vote for either Bilbrey or Phipps, and this is why I'm supporting Thunder Over the 3rd.

Vote for Thunder the Wonder Ferret as a write-in for New Albany City Council District 3.

 ... Phipps does a fair to middling job of performing the duties of a purely average council representative. However, in political terms Phipps is profoundly weak, and he has done so very little on his own initiative that it comes down to a single consideration.

Phipps has supported Mayor Jeff Gahan roughly 95% of the time, and I've opposed Gahan by an equal percentage. The taint is real.

Consequently, I cannot vote for Phipps, who has been utterly non-intellectual in his persistent sycophancy. That's a shame. He could have been so much more.

But no.

He wasn't ... and isn't likely to be.

---

Roger's Endorsement Compendium:

• Vote Stefanie Griffith for New Albany City Council District 1.
• Vote Scott Stewart for New Albany City Council District 2.
• Vote for Thunder the Wonder Ferret as a write-in for New Albany City Council District 3.
• Vote Cisa Kubley for New Albany City Council District 4.
• Vote Josh "JT" Turner for New Albany City Council District 5.
• Vote Scott Blair for New Albany City Council District 6.
• Vote Al Knable and Christina Estill for New Albany City Council At-Large.
• Vote your conscience for New Albany City Clerk, as both candidates are excellent.
• ON THE AVENUES: Socialists for Seabrook, because we desperately need a new beginning in New Albany.

We can't quote Gahan on neighborhood crime because he won't address it publicly.

Yesterday we had a look-see at the progress regress of this year's campaign to date, during which Slick Jeffie and the DemoDisneyDixiecrats have focused almost entirely on the mayor's ability to obey state law and produce a suitable annual budgetary snapshot.

As Gahan carpet-bombs Seabrook with HWC's cash, there is no discussion about real issues. Hmm, do you think that's intentional?

Republicans have not been the only listeners who've responded by suggesting we speak instead about Gahan's massive accumulated debt, but as an example of what's being missed, consider neighborhood crime.

Our friend D shared this thought on Facebook. It might be the best expression of the way optics propel Gahan in Oz; it's all about how things appear, and never about whether they actually function.

"To your point re: 'We've not heard an exchange of ideas about opioid use, drug addiction or their corollaries of neighborhood crime.' As someone (one of many in our community) who has been personally affected by drug-induced/related crime at my home, I reached out to one of Gahan's handlers earlier this year to see if we could get the Mayor (and perhaps the Chief) to host a town hall meeting to discuss what we as citizens could do to help police in their efforts to make our community safer.

"I'm quoting the response I received, 'That might be good for your neighbors and the community, but that wouldn't be good for Jeff.'

"I was told that they'd circle back to the idea after the primary. Now, call me crazy, but if our elected officials are doing it right, isn't what's good for the community and its citizens ALSO good for our elected officials? Apparently not in this version of New Albany, Indiana."

D not unexpectedly adds that Team Gahan hasn't gotten around to holding this meeting, even post-primary. Grassroots organizing has proceeded as City Hall keeps their efforts at arm's length, terrified of how it might make the Genius of the Floodplain look in reality, as opposed to fantasy.

I can hear Greg Phipps now: "But he bulldozed the homeless camp, didn't he?"

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Thursday) Slick Jeffie's car-centric street grid remains designed to maim and kill, and his clique doesn't give a damn.

Last week was so much fun, let's do it again.

As a run-up to Decision 2019, I'm headed back into the ON THE AVENUES archive for five straight days of devastatingly persuasive arguments against four more years of the anchor-imbedded Gahan Family Values™ Personality Cult.

I've already made the case for Mark Seabrook as mayor.

Now let's return to the voluminous case against Gahanism in five informative and entertaining installments -- at least until next week, when I may decide to do it all again. Heaven knows we have enough raw material. Following are last week's hammer blows.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Monday) The Reisz Mahal luxury city hall, perhaps the signature Gahan boondoggle.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Tuesday) Gahan the faux historic preservationist demolishes the historic structure -- with abundant malice.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Wednesday) The shopping cart mayor's cartoonish veneer of a personality cult. Where do we tithe, Leader Dearest?

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Thursday) That Jeff Gahan has elevated people like David Duggins to positions of authority is reason enough to vote against the Genius of the Floodplain.

GIVE GAHAN THE BOOT: (Friday) Slick Jeffie's hoarding of power and money is a very real threat to New Albany's future.

And this week's pink slip chronicles:

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Monday) No more fear, Jeff. This isn't East Germany, and you're not the Stasi.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Tuesday) In 2015 roughly 14% of New Albany's eligible voters opted for the Anchor Deity, and they’re getting exactly what they deserve – good and hard.

GIVE GAHAN A PINK SLIP: (Wednesday) When he seized NAHA, Slick Jeffie depicted himself as a wise, caped, fatherly hero, when in fact he was more two-faced than Harvey Dent.

I'll never forget that when many of us in the 3rd council district were asking only that City Hall implement Jeff Speck's original two-way street grid network proposals, which transcended mere traffic direction changes by incorporating innovative and state-of-the-art improvements designed to enhance walkability and bicycle infrastructure, both Greg Phipps (councilman) and Greg Roberts (East Spring Street Neighborhood Association president) publicly dismissed Speck's ideas as outlandish and "going too far" for primeval New Gahanians.

Via the acquiescence and unwillingness of neighborhood "leaders" like Phipps and Roberts to do their homework and grasp what Speck was trying to say, Gahan was permitted to float yet another bait 'n' switch, gutting a wonderful walkability and bike-ability program, and transforming it into just another re-election paving project.

Yes, the two-way foundation was retained, but rendered far less transformational through the stupidity, timidity and the incomprehension of the C- minus students inhabiting our elite structure.

Two-way streets are better than one-way streets, and yet Gahan's various roadway boondoggles have bolstered automobile supremacy, not curbed it. Biking, walking and the simple act of crossing the street remain dangerous, and City Hall is inert -- all this, and quite a few self-identified "progressives" will cast a ballot for Gahan because ... why, exactly?

That's why this fetid swamp must be drained and the arrogant clique flushed.

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August 9, 2018

ON THE AVENUES: There's only one way to cure City Hall's institutional bias against non-automotive street grid users, and that's to #FlushTheClique.

A weekly column by Roger A. Baylor.

For more years than I care to remember, I’ve been attending weekly Board of Public Works and Safety (BOW) meetings, admittedly on an irregular basis, although still often and depressingly enough to justify frequent bottles of gin.

Just think of the books I’ve missed reading.

BOW's weekly grind largely consists of a procession of engineers, contractors and utility company representatives, who march to the podium and ask for permission to destroy existing infrastructure in order to improve it, by digging holes, felling trees, milling streets and maintaining essential backflow -- which in this instance means those many rivulets of convenience cash flowing into eager campaign finance ponds.

I’ve heard hundreds of these requests during the past 15 years, followed by the replies of BOW members and other city officials in attendance. Their words in response seldom vary.

“Will this digging/clearcutting/dynamiting, which we’ll be numbly and ritualistically approving anyhow, even dare impact passing drivers in their cars?”

Once in a blue moon someone thinks to ask a different kind of question.

“Will this digging/clearcutting/dynamiting impact sidewalk users -- walkers in the general sense, but especially disabled persons, who might have no other options to bypass closed sidewalks when BOW’s stated objective is to coddle drivers?”

On those rare occasions when a board member or functionary utters such heresy, he or she recoils immediately, as though smacked in the face by an evil spirit bearing a two-by-four.

“No, no, Mr. Nash -- I take it all back! Go ahead and pile dirt and debris on the sidewalk, even when it’d be easier to take up a parking space for them. By all means, leave your work trucks to block passage by those on foot or using a wheelchair. In fact, make those wheelchairs go out into the street so we can blame the disabled when speeding cars hit them broadside -- anything, just don’t rescind my invitation to the paving company’s annual costume ball.”

The preceding is an example of how car-centrism is reflective of institutional bias in places like New Albany.

A tendency for the procedures and practices of particular institutions to operate in ways which result in certain social groups being advantaged or favored and others being disadvantaged or devalued. This need not be the result of any conscious prejudice or discrimination but rather of the majority simply following existing rules or norms. Institutional racism and institutional sexism are the most common examples.

Institutional bias helps to explain why Jeff Speck’s proposals to revolutionize our city’s street grid suffered a grim and meticulous death by a thousand belches and almost as many farts.

Speck’s plan was pruned again and again until the majority of design mechanisms intended to bring about the greatest positive change for the greatest number of overall users, whether behind the wheel of a car or navigating a skateboard, were left despoiled on the cutting room floor amid the laughter of Pinocchio Rosenbarger and David “Playboy of the Western World” Duggins.

Isolated in an otherwise untouched design vacuum, stripped of Speck’s ancillary buttresses, two-way traffic alone couldn’t have ever proven capable of transformation. It has been slightly helpful within its straitjacket, as tailored by the most intellectually deficient mayor in this city’s history, but it needs lots of help, beginning with one simply imperative.

Flush the fuckers, ASAP.

---

Institutional bias and institutional inbreeding aren’t exactly the same concept, although it might be argued that the first is an inevitable outcome of the second.

In the case of bureaucrats appointed to BOW, the redevelopment commission and other city agencies, we see the same “idea” people making the same decisions in conjunction with the same engineers, contractors and vendors -- and with the same underachieving results. At times these functionaries swap positions, but seldom is there any challenge to basic assumptions.

Hence the design conformity that comes to characterize closed systems. No new ideas can penetrate the circled wagons, and in political terms, the clique chooses to optimize whichever “outside” contributors (HWC Engineering and Jacobi, Toombs and Lanz being prominent local examples) who understand best how to prime the pump for maximum political patronage.

It's recurringly revolting, hence the generalized institutional bias, because dude: it’s always been this way. Cars come first. Multiple users of a street? Do they even vote? Why don't they have cars to begin with?

Planned paving obsolescence and proper pothole prioritization -- now there’s the ticket to many happy electoral returns.

After Chloe Allen was killed by a driver who went scot free, I wrote a fictional statement that we should have heard emanating from Jeff Gahan’s graft-smeared lips, and of course did not, because cynical and self-aggrandizing political calculations are why he’s here, or in the case of human emotion, they’re why he’s never, ever, here at all.

Kindly allow me to update it, but first, note that when the city of New Albany’s piecework feed supplier at Twitter deigned to mention Matt Brewer’s death, he or she already had been instructed that the paramount mission in any such mention was to declaim responsibility.

Yay! It wasn't our fault! Can't blame us!

Right. You know what this is?

It's just plain sick.

---

AN IMAGINED STATEMENT FROM OUR MAYOR

My fellow New Albanians, as your mayor – no, strike that.

I’m sorry. This isn’t the usual boilerplate.

As a human being, I’m saddened that a resident of New Albany lost his life skateboarding along Spring Street. Matt Brewer was only trying to return home after doing what he loved, and now he’s dead.

It’s unacceptable, it’s tragic, there are no excuses, and we’re going to do something about it. We cannot restore his life, but we can heed the words of Ms. Lori Kay Sympson, a friend of the late Chloe Allen, who in 2016 lost her life trying to cross Spring Street:

"If anything good can come of this, it'll be that this intersection is made safer."

In 2018, we’re referring to the intersection at 9th Street and East Spring, but actually the topic is enhanced safety for all street grid users on Spring (and Elm, and Market, and for that matter, all our streets). 

We’ll be taking a fine-tooth comb to our street grid, because for too long, we’ve ignored the dangers at this and other intersections in New Albany. This is going to change.

It’s critical for everyone who uses city streets that safety is not restricted to one or another crosswalk, or to this or that street. We have a problem.

We also have an opportunity.

Hazards are abetted on a daily basis by the way we’ve chosen to manage the city’s street grid. Indiana law plainly advises drivers that walkers have the right of way – and just as plainly, walkers in New Albany know that our streets are a coin flip at best. We may have sidewalks, but we don’t have walkability.

That’s because traffic safety has come to be viewed entirely as safety for drivers of cars, and not the city as a whole, including those who move about in other ways -- walking, biking, in wheelchairs or carts, or using skateboards. The problem at intersections like 9th and Spring, or Spring and Vincennes, extends for many blocks in all four directions. 

We cannot improve safety by merely treating symptoms. Only major surgery will be effective. We had the chance last year, and frankly, we blew it.

When I chose Jeff Speck to pioneer a walkability study for New Albany, it was done with the recognition that his factual, reality-based recommendations would preface a bold new chapter in the city’s history by restoring an environment suitable for all citizens and all users of our streets, whether on foot, riding a bicycle or driving a car.

Automotive traffic was never intended to move at highway speeds through built-up urban areas intended for the speed of your child at play, not for limited-access conditions like those on an interstate highway.

Unfortunately our city officials lost sight of the possibilities. So did I, so did HWC Engineering, and now we’re all going to return to Speck’s tool kit and do the things we failed to do with the two-way grid modernization program, and with the ultimate objective of slowing and calming traffic.

When it comes to humans driving cars, speed, inattentiveness and recklessness kill. It’s intolerable, and it has to stop.

Certainly law enforcement plays a part in any potential solution, but Speck’s proposals were based on empirical evidence. They were based on facts, and we simply didn’t implement them. We closed our minds to innovative thinking, and now it’s time to do the right thing and implement area-wide traffic calming as quickly as possible; not only must safety be our first imperative, but we also must apply principles of “quality of life” to this city as a whole, and to manage the city according to best practices for all grid users, not just some.

Call the street reform process as you will, so long as you grasp the necessity. Walkability, complete streets and street calming are good for neighborhoods, property values, quality of life and small business success. Cities all across the country provide examples, and we need only follow suit.

Some might point to statistics, and say that when it comes to deaths by walkers and bicyclists at the hands of people driving cars and trucks, New Albany is better than the national average.

That’s no consolation, and it is no reason to refrain from proven methods of doing better. Public safety is the very last place to be miserly, whether with money or scrutiny. An active, progressive, forward-thinking city is far more than the sum of its automobiles.

Rather, a city is about people like Matt Brewer and Chloe Allen, and the best -- the only -- way for us to honor their sacrifice is to get this damn thing right, once and for all.

I hope you’ll join us in the effort -- now, not later.

Mayor Jeff M. Gahan

---

Yes, I know. An unlikelihood of epic dimension, but a boy can dream about mayors who aren't built from silly putty and composite Disney caricatures.

Meanwhile, one after the other, Team Gahan's merry practitioners of institutional bias -- those arrogant products of institutional inbreeding -- step forward at the BOW meeting to insist our spanking new flashing yellow pedestrian crossing lights actually work (they don't), that speeds have appreciably slowed since two-way traffic was instituted (they haven't), and if deficient citizens in wheelchairs and carts, on foot or with skateboards, wish to avoid being killed or maimed, can’t they just stay on the sidewalk?

Of course, only in those cases when BOW hasn't already approved blocking the sidewalk so as to spare inconvenience to drivers, most of whom never notice they're being fellated because they're too busy staring at their phones while driving.

Team Gahan surveys the neighborhood carnage, and says: "Who are you going to believe, us or your own two eyes?"

Lasik isn't necessary to answer that one. In truth, Team Gahan is the problem, not the solution, and it’s them, not us, in immediate need of being institutionalized -- and yet we have a far better solution: #FlushTheClique and #FireGahan2019.

Flush Gahan’s toxic legacy, and it will travel through the sanitary sewer system, eventually re-entering the Ohio River at a point just downriver from the skate park by the amphitheater.

It's time for them to go. Then maybe we can get something accomplished in this town.

In a brazen pre-election ploy, Gahan commits city to $1,000,000 in additional fire department salaries by the year 2023.

Hmm. Does it say anywhere how we go about paying the added firefighters and first responders once the grant is used instead to beautify a street in front of an appointed board member’s business?

"It does make clear that we have to pick up 25% of the first year and then a higher percentage each of the next three, at which point we will have obligated ourselves to about a million dollars a year for additional firefighters. But that's for the next mayor to worry about," wrote the Bookseller in reply.

"November 31st is the last day to apply, according to the Gahan team,"he then added.

"Bodes well for a third term and is indicative of the team's always-keen attention to detail." 🤥

New Albany to hire additional firefighters with $2.5 million grant, by Brooke McAfee (Tom May's Cabin)

NEW ALBANY — With the help of a federal safety grant, the City of New Albany will soon have more firefighters and first responders available to serve the community.

The city recently received a $2.5 million “Staffing for Adequate Fire & Emergency Response" (SAFER) grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that will help the New Albany Fire Department to increase its staff through direct funding. New Albany is one of about 300 communities across the U.S. to receive the grant ...

As Gahan carpet-bombs Seabrook with HWC's cash, there is no discussion about real issues. Hmm, do you think that's intentional?

As I've been saying for years, Big Daddy Gahan has never experienced genuine electoral competition, and when at long last he would feel a breath on his neck, the gift-showering avuncular Oz the Great and Powerful pretense would be dropped faster than a snake sheds his skin, and Gahan would go full-tilt Mitch-McConnell-slimeball using all that money showered upon him by pay-to-play special interests.

This we have seen, voluminously (sorry, Shane; look it up).

I received another poison pen mailer yesterday, with another denunciation of Mark Seabrook's conniving county Floyd County government -- in effect, another in a series of diversionary tactics by Gahan and the DemoDisneyDixiecrats ... assembled by a hired assassin company in San Francisco (see links below).

Apart from the characteristically (intentionally) ineffectual League of Women Voters/News and Tribune "forum" at the Silver Street Homerdome in early September, Gahan's seemingly limitless fat cat donor cash has been strategically deployed to eliminate any opportunity to discuss substantive issues.

Nary a word during the campaign has been said about poverty or the homeless (assuredly Gahan's bulldozers remain idling unless a poor person dares interrupt the harmony of his coronation).

We've not heard an exchange of ideas about opioid use, drug addiction or their corollaries of neighborhood crime. 

There has been nothing said about the city's stagnant population growth ("business of residency" apparently has been discarded as insufficiently photogenic), and of course topics like Gahan's public housing putsch, indifference to his own Human Rights Commission "landmark", botched "walkable" street grid implementations or sewer rate INCREASE have been kept safely out of view.

Gahan seemingly has nothing to declare save for his own brilliance, as well as a knack for shaking down political patronage supplicants so that no beak is left unwetted as the Genius of the Floodplain finances another selfless gift to you -- using YOUR credit card and billing YOUR grandchildren for the privilege.

I was hoping Gahan might attend the ribbon re-attachment ceremonies at several downtown businesses which haven't survived his glorious acumen, but he's never seen once the closing padlock snaps, is he?

Sadly, the compromised newspaper's silence is deafening.

And so it's all about the dastardly county Republicans, and it's all about Gahan's money, and my "progressive" neighbors are staying stone-silent about these many other subjects which should be of interest to them; obviously this is all hunky dory if you're Don Gahan and Sancho Dickey.

Get a grip, because you're being duped -- and you know, it might actually be that Gahan and his special interest lubricators want it that way.

Election 2019: The buying and selling of a city, or our updated master list of 73 Gahan wheel-greasers, a veritable pornographic potpourri of pay-to-play.

These 30 free-spending special interest donors top Jeff Gahan's 2019 pay-to-play campaign finance windfall of $150,000 (so far).

CFA-4 Follies: OMG, just look at Gahan's huge pile of special interest donor cash flowing to out-of-towners.

"The unraveling of Rudy Giuliani."

Or, as another writer sought to explain, "How Rudy Giuliani went from a respected federal prosecutor and beloved NYC mayor to Trump's bag man."

Whenever they say it isn't about the money ...

The unravelling of Rudy Giuliani, by Lexington (The Economist)

No one member of Donald Trump’s coterie has fallen further than “America’s mayor”

Had Lexington’s 2007 incarnation been informed that the next Republican president would be a pro-gay, pro-choice, thrice-wed New Yorker, the name of Donald Trump would not have leaped to his august mind. Rudy Giuliani led the Republican primary by a big margin throughout that year. There were, to be sure, doubts about whether the former New York mayor was too socially liberal for small-town conservatives. He had once shared a house with two gay people and a Shih Tzu and, what was worse, acted in a comic skit alongside Mr Trump, that symbol of louche metropolitanism. Moreover America was not given to electing “abrasive” New Yorkers, Lexington cautioned then. But, like many others, he suspected Mr Giuliani’s dynamism and the broad support he enjoyed for his calm leadership after 9/11 and record of crime-fighting could compensate for such handicaps.

It has been pretty much downhill ever since for Mr Giuliani—culminating this week in what appears to be the worst crisis of his increasingly scandal-plagued career ...

(snip)

In truth it is hard to find any altogether convincing explanation for Mr Giuliani’s behaviour. He was once a serious politician prone to indiscipline; now he is wild. Yet a former colleague of his, who knows both men, suggests resentful envy of his old co-star Mr Trump—whom he must secretly disdain—may be eating him alive. If so, Mr Giuliani is going to really hate it when the president and his entire party flatly disown him. That looks like the inevitable next stage in his disgrace.