There’s nothing funny about it, folks. Whether they are truly just paranoiac conspiracy theorists or witting tools of a criminal political machine, there is an element at large determined to poison the atmosphere of political discussion and to stifle free speech.
It’s unfortunate that they also seem to have been smoking dope when they should have been paying attention in English class. Their composition skills, incredibly, are even worse than their reasoning skills.
The Hon. Maury Goldberg, the former city council member for the 3rd District, has attempted to give us a history of the atrocious management of New Albany’s sanitation department. Speaking loutly, if incoherently, certain elements have willingly misinterpreted these histories to support their own miserable preconceptions.
How anyone could possibly take what Mr. Goldberg reports and twist it to support a belief that trash collection user fees are “propping up” the city’s sewer utility operations is beyond me.
Mr. Goldberg is earnestly seeking answers. He clearly favors a solution to our sanitation problems that would necessitate a 50% increase in user fees. That’s a solution that I believe, after 15 years of an ongoing subsidy from the general fund and other fund accounts, is untenable. Nonetheless, I do believe MG is being intellectually honest, no matter how much I may disagree.
For one thing, New Albany is the home of a large proportion of residents on fixed incomes. Proportionally, this city has a large number of lower-income residents and an out-of-proportion number of elderly single-person households who do not have the ability to shoulder the burden of a trash-collection fee of $21 a month.
No one, least of all the cave-dwelling troglodytes, has made a convincing case that maintaining sanitation as a purely civic service is worth the cost to our fixed- and limited-income population.
No, the psychotic strain spews the canard that the only explanation is greed, corruption and an inherent desire to harm the community.
I, and many, many others are here to make the case that the current administration is demonstrating courage by addressing an intractable problem that has plagued this city for nigh unto a generation. The sanitation operations of this city have been so miserably mismanaged, with no easy solution in sight, that the only choice is to consider contracting this service to a private company.
Adhering to core principles of accountability and recognizing the valuable contributions made to municipal services by the current workforce, this mayor has continued to make the continued employment of the existing employees a priority. James Garner has not once descended to the tactic of criticizing the work ethic of the current workforce.
Of course, he will not be given credit for retaining these jobs. Political enemies will cast this as a callous betrayal of public employees. Reasonable people, however, will see that there has been nothing hasty or callous about the mayor’s course of action.
His plan maintains municipal control over the level of service. His plan strives to keep a maximum number of current workers employed. Furthermore, his plan fulfills the city’s obligation to the cooperative venture that is the Clark-Floyd landfill.
Continuation of services is jeopardized by the ongoing obstruction by the Gang of Four. As requests for proposals issue this week, the mayor and his administration are committed to the absolute minimum of job losses (the preference is zero job losses) and to maintaining our obligations to utilize the community landfill operations.
It is clear that opponents either don’t understand the basic mathematics of fund accounting or that they are committed to a political agenda to keep the city operating inefficiently.
It is beyond ironic that the mayor’s opponents claim to be champions of the “little people” while insisting that the poorest of our citizens carry the burden of a provably inefficient sanitation operation.
There is no question but that 50 years of outrageous cronyism and preferential treatment would give rise to such an unreasoned anger and vitriol. What’s most ironic, however, is that those who decry it most strenuously are ignoring the first, best chance to destroy the machine that has perpetuated this abomination of government accountability.
At long last, New Albany has a reform mayor, a mayor who is willing to disrupt the old boy network no matter the political cost. Those criminal and near-criminal elements who assumed that Garner would be “their boy” are angry and embittered. Clumsily, but evidently, they have enlisted a cadre of already disillusioned citizens to do their dirty work.
Whether that dirty work involves disinformation (the Schmidt modus operandi), craven populism and self-evident disdain of every communitarian instinct (the Price modus operandi), pure ignorance (the Coffey modus operandi), or naked political calculation (the Kochert M.O.), it is drawing the attention of the citizenry.
New Albanians are not stupid. They may have, in the past, paid little attention to the day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month machinations of city government. That day has passed.
Citizens are paying attention. They see who is seeking to move this city forward. They see who is making the tough decisions. They see who is timid and who is bold.
And now, the desperation of Garner’s political opponents has ramped up to a fever pitch. No tactic is beneath them. Slander is but the poisoned tip of their arrows. They do not hesitate to employ any tactic. These vandals, these Klansmen, these Nazis, see their hegemony threatened by a mayor who will not submit to their direction. They see an awakened constituency no longer accepting of an attitude of “it’s always been this way.”
New Albanians will not be cowed by criminal violence. They will not be fooled by crackpots pressing an agenda of racism, religious persecution, theocracy, homophobia, and xenophobia. They will react. They will reject the appeal to nativism and intolerance. They will, no matter which party banner it marches under, declare a preference. Choose YOUR side very carefully.
Posted by newalbanist 
Posted by newalbanist 
Posted by newalbanist 