> SOUTHERN INDIANA — Over the last several years I have been attending New Albany City Council meetings on a fairly regular basis in order to get a better grasp on how things are run in our city. It started out just as a cheap date night having some dinner at a local restaurant with some friends and then using the council meeting as the night’s entertainment. It also is a great opportunity to get material for writing this weekly column and for my future career as a stand up comic.

I don’t go to every council meeting due to my work schedule and also the need to keep my blood pressure in check. Some of those council meetings can really wear on you and cause an incredible headache. Sometimes if I believe that it will be an especially turbulent meeting I take a preemptive couple of Ibuprofen tablets in order to keep my head from pounding too hard.

Usually these assaults on my generally good health come from  some of the asinine arguments that are made by some of the members of the city council and also things that other speakers might say whether they are people from the general public or members of the city’s administration. I must admit that it has gotten better this year when the new city council was seated. I just hope that the improvements can continue so that our city will keep on improving.

In an effort to better understand the complexities of the situation of the recent New Albany-Floyd County Parks Department funding discrepancies, I have attended a couple of meetings of the Floyd County Council. The Floyd County Council is a little different animal than the New Albany City Council with different duties and responsibilities to go along with their different jurisdiction, which I am not sure that very many people understand at all.

One of the biggest misconceptions of our county council or any other in the state of Indiana is that they are not a legislative body. They are the fiscal body for the county. What this means is they do not create laws or policy, that is the job of the county commissioners. Their main responsibilities include preparing the annual budget which in turn sets our tax rate county wide and appropriating other monies that are within their authority including Economic Development Income Tax funds, River Boat and Rainy Day funds.

Another misconception of the general public, which may even be held by some members of the county council, is who they actually represent. Some people are of the mindset that the council’s boundaries begin at the city limits and extend to the edge of Floyd County. It seems that some people believe that if you live within the confines of the city of New Albany, you are not also a resident of Floyd County. In reality we are all one big happy family, or at least should be.

You see New Albany city residents pay the same Floyd County tax rate as citizens that live outside of the city limits. That means if I live in a house with an assessed value of $100,000 in the city of New Albany and you live in a house with an assessed value of $100,000 outside of the city limits [including Georgetown, Greenville, Galena or any place in between] you pay the exact same amount in property tax to the Floyd County Treasurer. That tax money is what the county council uses to pay for things like the Floyd County Jail, the Floyd County Sheriff’s department [including the salary of the Floyd County chief of Police] and the salaries of the members of the Floyd County Council.

Do the citizens of New Albany get the representation that they are indeed paying for? I believe that some members of the Floyd County Council are under the impression that they only represent those who live outside of city limits. They do not understand that citizens of New Albany are indeed also citizens of Floyd County and deserve the same consideration when they make their decisions. I believe it is time for our elected representatives to actually start representing everyone that lives and pays taxes in Floyd County.

This should not be a war between hill vs. valley people. I am not trying to start any friction between “city” and “county” people. I am a citizen of New Albany and Floyd County and in a war between city and county no matter if my team wins, my other team loses. I believe that our elected officials should begin to represent everyone that resides within the confines of our county equally, no matter what part of the county you live in.



Matthew Nash can be reached at dmatthewnash@gmail.com.