You’d think that after almost eight full years, the luminaries at the pinnacle of the municipal food chain would be able to settle on a slogan, or at least some semblance of a consistent message for use in telling the world about New Albany.
The latest full-page (might as well be a) campaign advertisement in Extol reveals the bar of creativity at low ebb. It is pictured above.
“The new New Albany sets the bar for quality of life.”
Oh dear. Quality like this?
Okay, so words typically fail them, but we have anchors galore (you’ll recall they’re dropped from ships when the captain desires to cease moooving forward) — and Jeff Gahan’s face, as ubiquitous as unenforced ordinances.
Regular blog readers know that certain questions fascinate us, like this: How many tax dollars are necessary to “find your personal Gsweet spot in the new New Albany?”
Let’s hope the mayor plumped for the six-issue discounted rate of $8,850, a savings of almost $2,000 yearly. Verily, the more tax dollars Gahan spends promoting himself, the more he saves in the sense of fewer withdrawals from his own whopping campaign finance haul.
Of course, we already know Gahan’s most cherished of sweet spots: Money, power and control.
Gahan’s own obsessions run primarily to slobbering in the presence of powerful special interests who write him campaign finance checks, and he has shown little ability to inspire genuine affection on the part of regular townspeople. Still, some of them devour the Rice Krispies Treats and chug the Kool-Aid …
… By the standards of a small city with a quarter of its residents existing below the poverty line, Gahan has hoarded a vast stock of power. He wields it autocratically with almost no input from outside the ruling circle, and buttresses his power by means of a ludicrous personality cult reflecting a former veneer salesman’s abrupt makeover from regular guy to flawless genius.
Here’s the way a patronage machine operates. The guy who owns HWC Engineering cuts Gahan his annual pay-to-play check.
Gahan banks a portion of it, then donates to the campaign efforts of local Democrats.
This leaves $1,500 — and a quarter-page ad in Extol costs only $600, assuming Gahan paid for it out of his own petty cash and not the city’s.
Look, we all know that Jason Applegate is the co-owner of Extol. There’s absolutely NOTHING necessarily illegal, immoral or unethical about Jason accepting advertising for his magazine and donations for his 2019 campaign from the very same mayor.
Rather, the preceding facts are intended to show the way that movers and shakers in a small city like New Albany routinely scratch each other’s backs, and readers may draw conclusions as they will — or not.
In my view, it’s all about the way Gahan sees the city as his possession, and the strange habit of authoritarian “leaders” looking in their mirrors and seeing the Godhead instead of the bald head.
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I’m voting for David White.
Democratic mayoral candidate David White understands that change begins with a whole lotta scrubbing, and NA Confidential advocates just such a deep civic cleansing.
After eight years on the job, Mayor Jeff Gahan’s list of stunning “achievements” is long, indeed: tax increases, budgetary hide ‘n’ seek, self-deification, daily hypocrisy, public housing takeover, non-transparency, pay-to-play for no-bid contracts, bullying city residents and bullying city employees. Eight years is enough. It’s time to drain Gahan’s swamp, flush his ruling clique and take this city back from Gahan’s Indy-based special interest donors.
NA Confidential supports David White for Mayor in the Democratic Party primary, with voting now through May 7.
