It’s the busiest time of the year for me, so I’m leaving this one on the marquee until Wednesday evening in the hope that a discussion will develop … RAB.
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All those current and aspiring city council members who’ve ever uttered the words “I’d do it for free” aloud, in public, please step forward.
Congratulations. You’re the new volunteer fire brigade.
Hell, we have to start somewhere, right?
Galoshes, horse-drawn wagons and wooden buckets are stacked in the storage area of the Floyd County Historical Society. Newly minted EMTs – don’t forget your leeches.
Readers are free to interpret the tortuous three-year saga of New Albany’s firefighter hiring ordinance according to any or all prevailing theories of human political, social and economic affairs, from Shining Path to Ayn Rand, and from Ronald Reagan through Noam Chomsky, and if at any point you’re able to make sense of it and discern any thread of consistency amid the shifting alliances and rhetoric, please don’t keep it to yourself.
Such insight just might qualify you to serve as mayor, fire chief, city council member or dogcatcher, or perhaps all — or as is equally likely, none of them.
Verily, only one thing is beyond doubt, and that’s the long overdue discovery of the central active ingredient in the New Albany Syndrome: A profound inability of New Albanians to communicate with each other.
It’s the reason why it has taken so long to determine the best way to hire a firefighter, and moreover, it’s the reason why the current city council has wasted so much time on issues great and small during the course of its tenure.
But, given that we as residents tend to get the sort of government we deserve if we’re unwilling to work together to change it, poor communication is also the reason for the curious decision on the part of certain of the author’s 3rd District brethren that the “best” way to displace the incumbent – one of the chief symbols of the New Albany Syndrome’s inherently dysfunctional miscommunication – is to run not one, but two candidates against him, presumably to better split the anti-incumbent vote, ensure his re-election, and to help bring about the perfect circumstances for a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Now that’s New Albanianism at its finest – and most profoundly disillusioning.
Truly, we’re all cut the same in a town this size. The office holders we elect are no different than we are, and if we’re incapable of something so incredibly simple as uniting tactically around a single credible candidate as part of an overall strategic plan to lift the council bar, exactly how can we criticize the ensuing dysfunction?
In fact, by doing so, we’re enabling the dysfunction.
Effective communication among all parties involved might have precluded this unfortunate juncture, and yet at various times, critical elements have chosen to unilaterally excuse themselves from the numerous forums offered to facilitate communication.
Not unlike the firefighter hiring imbroglio … and that’s very annoying for those of us seeking for three long years to be facilitators.
There are no hidden meanings in today’s sermon. If you’re reading this, you’re still a valued friend and neighbor. None of what I’m writing here changes anything in a personal sense, although the present absence of reassurance in any substantive and collective sense has jaundiced my view of future hope.
At first, I wasn’t going to speak of these 3rd district matters publicly, primarily because it would be easier for me if I were not forced to listen to the vindictive chortles of the congenital naysayers and semi-professional obstructionists, but in fact, and to be perfectly, brutally fair, these non-contributing hyenas have every right to enjoy a good laugh at our expense, because somehow we’re well along in the process of managing to pull the stupefyingly difficult feat of pulling the 3rd district rug out from under our very own feet even as we stand atop it.
Readers may recall this excerpt from my January manifesto:
I regard the city council tenure of Steve Price as a nadir for my 3rd council district. I am absolutely positive that the district and the city need better if we’re ever going to escape the leaden grip of the self-defeating, self-perpetuating, underachieving and anti-intellectual New Albany Syndrome.
To my extreme and enduring embarrassment, I did not foresee the opposition’s pell-mell descent into the Syndrome’s crippling factionalism, and while I remain convinced of the reality that CM Price is the very embodiment of political inadequacy, it appears now that in personal terms, there’s no place for me in the 3rd district’s Democratic primary sweepstakes. Perhaps it will be a different story when the slate is wiped clean following the primary, but today, right now, according to the dictates of my conscience, I’m effectively nullified as an active participant in the forthcoming campaign.
As a public affairs blog, NAC will continue to report on activities pertaining to the 3rd district race, and on relevant pronouncements made by the three candidates. My colleague and co-editor Bluegill may wish to comment and editorialize, and he is perfectly free to do so, as I’ve not sounded him out prior to writing this essay.
It’s quite possible that he doesn’t agree with my position, and that you, the reader, don’t agree either, but please bear in mind that the preceding is a statement of personal conscience, and shaped by not only one, but by a series of factors largely outside my control as an individual.
So be it. See you in May.
