Promising or puzzling?

New Albany’s new economic development director identifies bookstores as important anchor stores for development.

That’s a little ambiguous, so I’ll be seeking some clarification. Read this VolunteerHoosier post regarding today’s article in The Tribune and tell me what you think.

Setting a course for progress

The aftermath of the second City Council meeting of the year continues to provide grist for the journalistic mill as The Tribune’s Amany Ali provides us with yet another follow on story in today’s editions.

Her investigative piece on council-mayor tensions regarding appointments was followed by a profile of the city’s new Building Commissioner, Paul Roberts. Today we get the first public utterances from the squared-away Economic Development Director, Paul Wheatley.

Some of what he has to say is the expected – “Certainly, the city of New Albany needs a bit of revitalization.”

But as Wheatley surveys his new responsibilities, he and the mayor have apparently been exploring the mundane and the exotic.

The biggest surprise is Wheatley’s mention of how wireless Internet for the city could be a benefit.



Does he mean universal access by means of a public utility? Or are they discussing a wireless network for the city government? We’d love to hear more. Other municipalities have realized substantial savings by creating their own broadband utility, but in areas where broadband was otherwise completely unavailable.

Since the satellite providers bailed out on Internet service, wireless or land line has been the only alternative, and when the telcos refuse to bring service to outlying areas, it can be a devastating to those communities and their jobs/economic survival.

We’re not quite in the same fix, with at least two alternatives for high-speed Internet, but we’d like to see it extended throughout the county/region. The little-known secret is that a municipal utility can, through its enterprise powers, generate significant revenues from outside its boundaries by creating a wireless system.

In Ali’s article, Wheatley comes off as an alert guy who recognizes the need for caution, but who also has a modicum of vision in his new role as the city’s chief recruiter.

I was at first alarmed at his statement that “we need your anchor-type stores, which would attract other stores.” I’m prepared to reserve judgment until I hear him clarify that priority statement. He defines anchor projects to include Scribner Place and such businesses as bookstores. Quickly, we need to take up a collection to buy Wheatley a copy of The Hometown Advantage: How to Defend Your Main Street Against Chain Stores, and Why it Matters.



Read Ali’s story, when posted, at http://www.news-tribune.net/ or pick one up at your local independent bookseller.

Indubitable

Some say the conflict between the Red states and the Blue states is intractable.

But the conflict between a couple resolving which television show to watch is tractable.

They say that death on this mortal plane is inescapable.

But a handy umbrella makes a few raindrops escapable.

In this country, my right to speak my mind is inviolable.

But others prove that my right to peace of mind is violable.

Which brings me to the foolishness afoot in the comment postings of a local polemicist’s Web log. If the blogger’s postings are without fail intelligent, does that make those creepy and anonymous “bomb-thrower” posts indubitably telligent?

Taking a walk

Our intrepid band of surveyors launched today, and while allusions to Lewis & Clark would be inappropriate, the frigid temperatures lent an air of bicentennial authenticity.

Working as a team, we were able to piece together some of the raw data, architectural heritage, and unfiltered rumor about one segment of the downtown business district. We managed to do a fairly decent survey of the west bank of Pearl Street from Oak Street to Main Street.

Still, this is just a beginning. We still need volunteers to search the tax records and visit the various businesses during the working day.

Exploring afoot gives a much richer perspective on the uses and misuses of the space downtown. Of course, a sidewalk survey can be misleading since you can’t explore the nooks and crannies and a Sunday is not the best time to find the street’s businesses occupied (more’s the pity).

As a newcomer, I found the survey raised more questions. For example: Is a private parking lot the highest and best use for the corner of Spring and Pearl, former site of the U.S. Post Office/Federal Building? Or is that public land being used for private parking? Elsewhere, it appeared that vast parking space was being reserved for some future influx of commercial tenants and clients. Could that be put to use in the meantime? We explored some of the parking space referred to on City Clerk Marcy Wisman’s Web site – the space for which her office issues monthly permits.

Working as a group also enabled us to share our speculations about the future uses of prime downtown property and the missed opportunities that continue to plague the city in its recruitment of new entrepreneurs.

Join us next time, or offer your time to flesh out our research with time in the property office to determine who owns what. Working on a Sunday afternoon prevented us from soliciting help from many of the folks who make downtown their workday home, but a door-to-door canvass for ideas and intelligence would be a great help.

You’ll also be interested to know we were able to talk with a few downtown merchants and residents who offered keen insights and visions for the future of downtown.

Which is the whole point. That’s what we’ll discuss just four short weeks from now at the Destinations Booksellers Public Affairs Symposium for Winter 2005. The topic is New Visions for Downtown New Albany. The panel and moderator have accepted our invitation and we are gathering ideas, comments, and studies for a wide-ranging discussion. We believe this will be an important event for the future of the city, so if you have a contribution to make to the symposium, speak up now. We’ll have selected members of the audience make two-minute presentations of an idea or a question and the panel will address them in sequence.

This symposium is designed as a forum to discuss ideas to rescue downtown as a commercial, recreational, and residential haven. All residents and other interested parties are encouraged to participate, and we’ll have the welcome mat out for our public officials, too. Stay tuned. We’ll be sharing more with you in the coming days, including our essay contest for elementary and secondary school pupils.

I would wait, but…

…this is just too good. I had been waiting for the entry into the blogosphere of a new friend of the store. I expected a highly literate degree of discourse, but never expected such entertainment.

May I recommend:

http://egglestoniancreed.blogspot.com/

You won’t be disappointed at this very personal, pointed, peripatetic, poignant Web log.

History with impact

One of the little-known advantages of becoming a Patron Passport member at Destinations Booksellers is the ability to preview top titles months before they come out. All we ask is that the patron provide us with a brief review for us to share with others and to help us evaluate interest in the title.

Frequent patron Edward Parish, who was completely bowled over by Adam Hochschild’s King Leopold’s Ghost, agreed to review the writer’s newest book, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves. It’s available now and on prominent display in hardcover at $26.95, but for blog readers who mention it this week, we’re making it available for $22.95.

Here’s Ed’s review:

Upon finishing the new book by Adam Hochschild, I had the same feelings as I did after completing Hochschild’s master novel King Leopold’s Ghost.



Hochschild is a wonderful story teller and uses his in-depth research to tells us how men in London in 1787 got together to try and end slavery. Along the way, they would pioneer most of the tools citizen activists still rely on today, from wall posters and mass mailings to boycotts and lapel pins.



Within five years, more than 300,000 Britons were refusing to eat the chief slave-grown product – sugar; London’s “in crowd” wore antislavery badges created by Josiah Wedgwood; and the House of Commons had passed the first law banning the slave trade.



Also Hochschild tells us of Thomas Clarkson’s lifelong crusade against slavery and the slave-trade. Clarkson formed working relationships with several of the most important emerging figures of the anti-slavery movements in Britain, including James Phillips, Granville Sharp, and William Dillwyn, and Clarkson is credited with bringing M.P. William Wilberforce into the movement at the formation of the Quaker-influenced Committee for Abolition (1787).



The continued efforts of the Committee to lobby Parliament and raise the consciousness of the British people to the cruelties of the slave trade resulted, in 1788, in the introduction of legislation before Parliament to curb the harshest forms of treatment, though it was not until 1807 that a bill to end the slave trade managed to pass both houses.



This is an essential read to remind all of us on the horror that was inflicted upon the race of the African people and work to see that it never happens again.

My rating for this read is *****



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By coincidence, my daughter Schuyler, who is a senior at the University of Southern California, spent Friday evening with Adam Hochschild. By phone, we shared with Adam our excitement about this newest book and informed him that the patrons of Destinations Booksellers are partial to non-fiction, and serious history in particular. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that we could arrange an author appearance by Hochschild in the future.

Doing the grunt work

Might we look back on the first week of February as a watershed moment in the history of Floyd County?

If you’re reading this, you’re probably accustomed to rapid connectivity and technological ease-of-use issues. Likewise, Web logs aren’t typically the hangout of the uninvolved.

The Floyd County Council seems determined to bring county government in line with the technological growth seen in the commercial sphere and among the most progressive communities. Is there any doubt that technology creates new opportunities for communication while keeping the cost of service delivery manageable?

The council will address such questions this week during a work session at the City-County Building’s main assembly room. It’s not a forum for the public to speak, but I’m certain the public would be welcome to observe. The tentative schedule says 5:30 p.m. on Thursday (Feb. 3).

Remember, this is a working session for the council to discuss needs and solutions, so if you plan to go, observe and report back. Often, it is these sessions where the real work gets done, so drop by, let the council know you have an interest in the government/technology nexus, but let them do their work.

What have you heard?

Have you written your legislators about House Bill No. 1148? Have they responded, yet? We wouldn’t really want a form letter campaign, but if you are concerned about this bill designed to protect utility companies at the expense of municipalities and the public, contact them with something like this:

I write urging you to oppose, procedurally and otherwise, the passage of House Bill No. 1148, which would preempt municipalities from bringing broadband Internet services to their entire populations, even when regulated telecommunications companies deny or delay the rollout of this essential democratizing service.

I am eager to know your views on this bill and your evaluation of its likelihood of passage.

Skittishness in "Mayberry"

The news is unsettling this morning after the Charlestown City Council tabled its motion to join in and issue bonds for a universal wireless broadband public-private partnership.

Timing may in fact be critical on this matter. Although we don’t yet know the full scope of the bill before the legislature which would preempt municipalities from creating universal broadband service availability under their statutory public utility powers, the delay is troubling.

One citizen was quoted as saying, “We’re running our city like Mayberry.” Except there’s no calm and reasoned Sheriff Andy Taylor at the helm.

Now, a final vote is delayed until February.

The Evening News’s Greg Gapsis has been following this story closely, but space limitations prevented our local paper from giving the story. Rumor has it, though, that The Evening News will have a comprehensive story on all these issues in Saturday’s editions, available here at the store or online at http://www.news-tribune.net/.

In the absence of local coverage, read more in Alex Davis’s report in The Courier-Journal or online at Charlestown delays vote on Internet deal; financing risks eyed.

A correction?

Previous inquiries about the whereabouts of New Albany’s city engineer Cory Earl hadn’t yielded any answers. But a conversation with city operations director Anthony B. Toran last evening indicates that Mr. Earl is still on duty.

I was careful to only raise the question online, so there’s nothing to apologize for. But if Mr. Toran is to be believed, and I think he can be, the city engineer continues in his job. If possible, I’ll share with you an explanation for the previously unresolved mystery when it becomes available.