Final votes on paving funds slated for Monday at New Albany City Council meeting (News and Tribune).
Kudos to Daniel Suddeath for somehow locating a council member (a) who is capable of communicating rationally about paving, sans the pogram-laden code language and ubiquitous red herring of two-way street conversions, and (b) willing to do so for attribution. Is it just a delirium-induced dream?
No, but it’s the first council coverage in a good while not to be fatally compromised by undue reliance on president Dan Coffey’s self-serving, inaccurate and misleading gibberish.
Instead, Suddeath shocks New Albany by spending a few minutes with Jeff Gahan, and while we’ve freely disagreed at various times with the sixth district representative in the past, he takes a public position here that is heard far too seldom these days:
“I think it’s important the council does not get caught up in micro-managing the decisions on which roads need to be paved.”
That’s a stunner, isn’t it?
Could there be a glimmer, however paltry, that someone on the council holds a balanced view of its relationship with the executive branch?
In the context of recent utterances by Coffey and at-large councilman Kevin Zurschmiede, the latter far too obviously relishing his newly chosen role as GOP agent provocateur, Gahan comes off as positively statesmanlike. It’s been so long since a council mayoral hopeful opted to “stealth” campaign by respecting the office he aspires to occupy rather than denigrating it as the source of all evil, we’ve forgotten what the experience feels like.
Congratulations, CM Gahan … er, I think.
Coffey’s anti-them-people diatribes, complete with harmony vocals by Jethro, will be collated very soon in a matchbox-sized volume we’re calling, “Just Say ‘No’ and ‘Fuck You’ to Anyone Living on East Spring Street.” Look for more in my Tribune column later this week, as I ponder the impact of square dancing, monomania and legislative illiteracy on the city’s future prospects.
