Triskadekaphobia: We're For It

One local blogger coined the appelation of "Open Air Museum of Superstition and Ignorance" for our fair city. It couldn't be more appropriate, then, that Friday the 13th approaches, a day when triskadekaphobia (fear of the number 13) reaches its pinnacle.

For once, the progressive movement in New Albany needs to cultivate, foster, and nurture a fear of the number 13. But unlike the forces of regress, we aren't trying to grow an unreasoned fear.

For 13 is how many times more expensive it is to the taxpayers of this city to use edit funds to subsidize sewer rates. It takes more than $13 in EDIT money to knock $1 off the sewer rate. That's right.

The council members plotting to arrest a coming sewer rate increase talk loudly and often about how they are looking out for nickels and dimes, how they are watching the corporate purse, but their plan is exactly the opposite of financial prudence.

Instead of investing our tax money into projects that will save us money (New Albany's atrocious roads cost the average driver $800 a year more than residents of the average American city - $800 in lower mileage from misaligned wheels, damaged tires, and wholesale destruction of the working and resale value of our cars), they want to spend it on recurring individual rate-payer expenses. To some extent, sewer rates can be elastic. Yes, there is a minimum charge. We've often spoken in favor of keeping the minimum charge low (thus giving a boost to those who use the least water) and making up the difference in higher rates.

But no, that would actually accomplish something. That would actually protect the proverbial "fixed-income" resident from unwelcome added expenses.

However, it's worse than that. While robbing the city coffers to try to fool the voters, while robbing New Albany of any hope of having its sewer utility operate on its own without tax subsidies, and while stripping the city of any ability to invest in infrastructure, this crazy plan will take money from New Albany taxpayers and transfer it directly to the biggest users of the system.

That's right. This plan removes incentives to conserve water, especially for businesses (who don't pay EDIT taxes), since the taxpayer will pick up part of the bill.

It's ironic that when anyone proposes actual targeted investments to give incentives to business practices, types of businesses, or specific locations, the hidebound council members howl "corporate welfare." And yet, their plan is an enormous piece of corporate and business pork.

If we had more respect for their ability to ratiocinate, we'd suspect they are in the pocket of big businesses. But we presume that they just don't see it, and since the only people speaking up about it are THEM people, they feel certain they can proceed with this foolish plan.

They've done it before and it looks like they're going to try to do it again.

There's another set of sewer ratepayers who will be sharing in this subsidy, too. The several thousand ratepayers who live outside the city (and who do not pay EDIT taxes into the city) who will receive 150% of the subsidy city residents would "receive."

Now one can argue that they shouldn't be paying 150% of what we do. But if this plan goes through, they'll be getting 150% of the discount, too.

We'd estimate that when it comes to comparing the typical residence in New Albany versus those in the fringe and those in Georgetown, 40% of the subsidy to residences will be going to people who don't pay EDIT taxes.

Drop the subsidy now. Stop diverting our investable tax money (originally designed for economic development purposes) to prop up the checking accounts of businesses and ratepayers outside the city.

Stop trying to fool the people that you are looking out for their best interests. Just stop.

If you truly want to help the poorest among us to deal with rising costs of living, propose a subsidy directly to those taxpayers. Craft a solution and gather the support for direct subsidies to specific ratepayers. At least then the debate will be honest.

Habits of Thought are Death to Truth

The ideological struggle for the future of New Albany continues unabated. On one side are advocates for a better New Albany who believe change is in order. On the other side are people who believe everything is just fine the way it is and who fear change.

Change can be a good thing. When change involves risk, a certain level of concern is justified. But when failing to change is dead-certain to bring fearful consequences, it makes no sense to hunker down and try to wait out the apocalypse.

One might forgive members of the general public for cowering fearfully in the dark. But the same response from elected officials is unacceptable, if only because they control the light switch while we pay the electric bill.

Our goal here is to push back the darkness. This week, the darkness is tax subsidies for sewers. Next week it will be something else.

Although we can't verify that it is original (and we doubt it is), we were struck by the words Rivka Galchen put into a character's head in his recent novel, Atmospheric Disturbances.

• "His response was neither random nor spontaneous; it was predetermined by his previous ideas about me; habits of thought are death to truth; I was outside of my habits; and he - he was wrong."

New Albany is being endangered. Not by "novelty lighters," as a recent council ordinance averred, but by habits of thought.

One of those habits of thought that should be recognizable is a belief by an influential faction on the city council that is so self-centric as to be bathetic. It involves the projection of one's own motives onto another. If a decision-maker looks at each choice as an opportunity for self-enrichment, then that decision-maker presumes that all others are making choices based on the same motives and motivations. That's very Darwinian, but hardly admirable.

A second habit of thought is that any proposal that is difficult to understand must have been created that way in order to confuse and thus exploit. Thus, when a decision-maker is presented with that difficult to understand idea, she becomes suspicious that she is being fooled. The habit of thought becomes a habit of action - that action being to say "no." It is foolish to think that "no" is always the safe choice, but we have a city council that certainly leans that way.

It's hard to credit the fact that a majority of this council, the second council in a row in which the voters essentially cleaned house and turned out half the members, could be steered by such habits of thought. But it is so.

Based on my reading of the tea leaves, this council is leaning toward a foolish plan to use tax dollars to subsidize sewer rates. If that is, in fact, the plan, I offer a serious alternative that ought to pass with just as little reference to the consensus view of reality.

On a council that pays regular homage to a "fixed magical belief" that they have special insights into public finance, this proposal ought to fly through three readings.

Instead of diverting $875,000 in EDIT funds to subsidize sewers (and sewer rates are based on water usage), let's divert it to pay for gasoline. Granted, many of the people who buy gas in New Albany don't pay EDIT taxes. But then many of the people who use sewers/water in New Albany don't pay EDIT taxes here. Gas prices are climbing rapidly and, let's face it, people are hurting. Under the Steve Price Plan, that's reason enough to spend tax dollars on it.

The proposal from Mr. Coffey that sewer rates be subsidized is a clear statement from him that he does not believe the sewer utility should be run like a business that supports itself. We have a number of industrial and commercial users of water that, as entities, pay no EDIT taxes, but use enormous amounts of water. The Coffey/Price plan would have you, the taxpayer, subsidizing their rates, too, but in the name of "the people."

From this vantage point, the only thing being done to the people by these two is to keep 'em in the dark.

I Dream of Effluent With the Light Brown...

We can dream, can't we?

The work sessions of the New Albany City Council are predictably scripted affairs, and although the public is grudgingly allowed to attend, this council has no interest in the participation of the public, despite the fact that at any given time, more members of the audience are up to speed on the issue at hand than are sitting among the knights of the squared tables. Want to advance this city? Get elected. Otherwise, sit down and shut up.

We're often baffled at how this council majority can delude itself into the belief that being elected, often without opposition and by a phenomenally small majority of its constituents, imbues them with a divine right and supreme judgment on all matters governmental.

But, they did manage to get on the public payroll in the accepted manner, and whether they earn their keep or not, they do get to make the final decisions.

But that doesn't mean we have to shut up.

If Monday's 6 p.m. work session presentation is to be believed, the England administration, the Sewer Board, and their financial advisers, Crowe Chizek and Company, LLC, have the golden ticket on a silver plate.

Perhaps for the first time in living memory, New Albany has an opportunity to make its sanitary sewer utility a self-sustaining entity. All municipal enterprises (and "enterprise" is, in this instance, a term of art) are intended to be self-sufficient. That is, they are required to support themselves from their own revenues and, from time to time, return surpluses to their owners, the cities who authorized, founded, and funded them.

New Albany's wise men seem to have skipped class during the semester they offered Public Finance and Fund Accounting 101. But maybe the dark ages of deteriorating sewers is coming to an end.

If the presentation is to be believed, a five-year program of physical plant improvements (none are optional and most are mandated by court order) can be funded by a manageable bond issue combined with a modest increase in rates. The rate increase is what you'll be hearing the most about, even though New Albany's rates will be, by far, the lowest for comparable cities in this region, even after an adjustment.

The most promising aspect of the plan is that a previously committed $875,000 of EDIT (economic development income tax) funds will be returned for more appropriate use by the city. Within five years, we are promised, the city will have a functioning sewage system and the financial stability to not only support itself, but to finance ongoing capital projects without any additional borrowing.

The minimum ratepayer, the proverbial granny on a fixed income (we have one in our family, too) would be looking at a bill increase of $2.20 per month ($26.40/year) on sewer charges. The average user would be facing a bill increase of $7.70 per month ($92.40/year). Compared to a gas fuel charge increase of $60 a month, that's not bad, especially when you recall that in New Albany we would still be paying at rates well below market price.

Yes, the administration could be lying. Crowe Chizek could be lying. But the risk seems nominal, particularly if we never again have to dwell on excreta and its treatment as the primary focus of our government.

We are hopeful that bluegill will again demonstrate why EDIT taxes are a pandering fool's method for pretending to serve the people.

By the way...heard any complaints about garbage service lately?