Democracy Works (when you try !!)

After a long evening of much wailing and gnashing of teeth concerning city employees, job displacements, salaries, benefits, TIF monies, EDIT monies, and the ghosts of Christmas past as they pertained to parking garages & Scribner place, the crescendo increased during the afterglow.

When the floor was opened for public comments concerning items not on the agenda for the evening, I approached the podium to offer this Council yet another alternative to avoid a costly court battle as it concerns redistricting of New Albany.

In essence what was proposed was that a committee be formed by the Council made up of the three at large Councilmen to meet with a delegation of Plaintiffs involved in the aforementioned lawsuit and hammer out an agreement of principle to redistrict in such a manner as to end up with equal population numbers in each of the six districts as nearly as possible.

The plaintiffs still hold that the bodycount can and should by law be much closer than a 600 person difference as was proposed by the Councils previous offering.

Following my proposal, Roger followed with a history lesson as to the actions and inactions that have thus far transpired in this matter.

Randy brought up the rear with a very concise and understandable explanation as to how TIF monies better serve a community for certain projects than do EDIT monies.

Then just as President Kochert was about to call for adjournment and drop the gavel, Councilmen Gahan presented a motion and received a second to form the aforementioned exploratory committee and a vote was called far.

At this point the volume level rose a few decibels and despite the exuberant efforts of both President Kochert and CM Coffee to squash the idea, their Attorney stated he saw no legal reason not to if the majority was in favor of the idea, and the final vote was 5 to 3 in favor of the motion with CM Schmidt abstaining.

Unfortunately for the public, the Tribune reporter had already left the room so the blogisphere and the street is where this event will be reported for now.

Regardless of what speculation may follow, I want to reinterate that the Plaintiffs only goal in this case is for the Common Council of New Albany to do that which it is required by statute to do in order to assure that ALL citizens of ou city have equal representation across the board.

I'm sure there will be much more discussion of this matter throughout the next days and weeks but at least for now I say "Chalk one up for the Gipper!"