GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Why can’t Duggins tell the truth about his NAHA commercial property purchases? Maybe Team Gahan’s bedrock corruption has something to do with it.

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On Sunday the Green Mouse asked: Why is the New Albany Housing Authority buying commercial property at the dumping grounds downtown on State Street?

This is the aerial view.

Just look at all those parking spaces already owned by the city, roughly 150 of them, situated closer to the steadily dwindling population of Riverview Tower than any conceivable future configuration of the adjoining block fronting on State Street — even if NAHA owned all of it.

Exactly why does Riverview Tower, populated by the elderly and disabled, and itself an increasingly obvious Gahan target for demolition or luxurious adaptive reuse, need hundreds of parking spaces?

It’s a question the ever acquiescent, no-follow-up-questions-ever News and Tribune stenographer Chris Morris might have asked Redevelopment New Albany Housing Authority honcho David Duggins, who instead was allowed to give the sort of spin you’d expect from an LSD user, not a public official.

The property that housed a wrecker service at 615 State St., across from Sav-A-Lot Foods, has been sold to the New Albany Housing Authority.

NAHA recently took control of the property and is having it cleaned up. The land will be used for additional parking for residents and visitors of Riverview Tower after it is cleaned, NAHA Director David Duggins said.

The wrecker service moved to the old Ray’s Exhaust location at 701 Vincennes St.

Ah, the odor of male cattle feces. Let’s delve into the truth of the matter.

In 2017 Mayor Jeff Gahan abruptly seized the New Albany Housing Authority, effectively bringing NAHA into direct city control. Experienced upper management was purged and NAHA’s board was stuffed with brown-nosed lickspittles.

The ultimate goal of Gahan’s hostile takeover was and remains to reduce the number of public housing units to as low a number as possible, and having done so, to free up funding that was to have been used to upgrade existing housing units for speculative gambling in campaign-finance-enhancing redevelopment adventures, whether these are aimed at manipulating newly vacant NAHA properties, or for the amassing of properties elsewhere.

Elsewhere as in the two commercial properties now owned by NAHA where Main meets Vincennes: GREEN MOUSE SAYS: Bet you didn’t know NAHA owns these properties on two corners of Main and Vincennes. Why?

Duggins can handily explain using NAHA money to purchase properties like these by referring to his mandate to scatter public housing, and Ben Carson surely doesn’t care a jot, but a child of six knows it would be absurd to build low-income housing on land far more valuable for other uses.

Please spare us the gobbledygook. These properties are being speculatively “banked” for future purposes using “free” NAHA Monopoly money that the city’s over-extended (read: skint) Redevelopment Commission doesn’t have.

Duggins wasn’t ever sent to NAHA and given a blockbuster pay increase (without commensurate experience) from the mayor’s tender concern about real human beings and their needs.

Rather, Duggins was sent to NAHA to do what he already was doing at Redvelopment, and to repurpose public housing’s resources for private sector gain, which as we know has the result of diverting a healthy flow of money back into Gahan’s campaign finance larder.

ON THE AVENUES: Gahan’s hoarding of power and money is a threat to New Albany’s future.

To paraphrase the great Hunter S. Thompson, people like Gahan and Duggins are so crooked they need assistance each morning to be screwed into their pants.

Once again I thank the News and Tribune for reading NA Confidential, but it would be even more helpful if the newspaper told the true story behind the Gahan administration’s Great Wall of Diversion. Unfortunately, Hanson and Duncan need the mayor’s steady, curative advertising revenue. So much for their newspaper’s declining credibility.

As for the other part: #FireGahan2019

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