newsroom@newsandtribune.com
July 02, 2009 11:36 pm
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County government not doing their job
I reside in New Albany. I have been divorced for almost three years and separated a year before that. My divorce went through Clark County, as did the child support order. My ex-husband has paid two child support payments in the four years, for a total of $100. I have tried to get this enforced in both counties.
The child support prosecutor in Clark County, Mr. Andrew Steele, says the crime of nonsupport is happening in Floyd County, therefore they cannot do anything. I have contacted the Floyd County child support office only to be told that I need to deal with Clark County — it’s that county’s order. Mr. Keith Henderson refused to see me when I asked for help. Andrew Steele will not return messages.
The noncustodial parent is behind $25,000, which, by the way, is a felony.
I have provided both offices with the phone number and last known address for the noncustodial parent. Why is it we can spend so much money to try a man — David Camm — three times on the taxpayers’ dime, but can’t enforce this?
Why is it that all these elected officials know your name when they want your vote, but after they are elected, they forget you?
— Becky Northern, New Albany
Reader corrects Baylor’s history mistakes
Mr. Roger Baylor’s article, “Unrecognizable to a Scribner,” in The Tribune on June 23, 2009, points out the fast approaching bicentennial celebration of New Albany’s founding to be held in 2013.
The Daughters of the American Revolution Piankeshaw chapter has since 1917 maintained the home of Joel Scribner, one of the founding brothers, keeping it as a museum and “home place” for the town. The chapter appreciates this recognition of the vision and enthusiasm and hard work of the Scribner brothers as they risked their fortunes and their futures to establish the town. The many handsome homes and sturdy buildings from earlier years attest that they were right in their faith in the future of the new town.
However, as we celebrate the history of New Albany, let us get the history right. According to the written account of Dr. William Augustus Scribner, son of Joel Scribner, one of the founders, his father was born in South East, Duchess County, N.Y., in 1772, but soon after the war, his father, a Revolutionary War veteran, moved the family to Connecticut, where the family grew up.
Later, Joel in turn established his family in Connecticut, but in 1808 moved to New York City, where he operated a grocery and feed store. Then in 1811, when William Augustus was 11, the family began the journey west to go into business in the frontier town of Cincinnati, along with the family of Joel’s sister and her family, the Warings.
The family never lived in Albany, N.Y.
In 1812, Joel was joined by his younger brothers, Nathaniel and Abner, and they decided to go into the business of starting a new town of the northern side of the Ohio River, then the frontier. By early January 1813, they made a trip to find a suitable location and purchased the land below the Falls of the Ohio. Tradition has it that they made this trip by horseback. It was in May 1813 that they moved the two families down river from Cincinnati by flatboat to the new location.
That year, William Augustus was 13 and helped with the surveying and laying out of the town’s streets and lots. His memory and recounting of the family story and development of the town is to be credited. They named the town New Albany after the prospering capital of the state of New York, in the belief that it, too, would become the capital of a large new rich and prosperous state to be established from the Indiana Territory. Another brother, James Scribner, their mother, Phoebe, and a sister soon followed to the new town.
Let us not allow Mr. Baylor’s article to begin another misconception, even in satire and jest, that the Scribners were greedy developers who pocketed gains and fled town for gambling tables elsewhere. Joel Scribner was a founding member of the First Presbyterian Church, organized in the home of his mother, and was an elected elder of the church.
Other members of the family were founding members. From the beginning, the family established an educational fund, contributed as a portion of the sale of each lot of land. They gave land for public buildings, a log school house and the church. All the family worked in various ways to insure the future of New Albany. Unfortunately, all of the brothers had died by 1827, too soon to fully realize how their vision would be fulfilled.
— Anne F. Caudill, librarian, Piankeshaw chapter of Daughters of the American Revolution, New Albany
Students ask for community’s help
My name is Davis Elliott, and I am a student council member at Parkview Middle School. During this past school year, I presented a plan to start an aluminum can recycling program at Parkview Middle School. While we made a good effort to collect cans, we weren’t able to fill our recycle cage before school was out for the summer.
On behalf of the students at Parkview, I am requesting the Jeffersonville community to please help us with donations of aluminum cans.
If any business, church, organization, club or neighbor could please drop off any aluminum cans through July 12 in the back parking lot of Parkview Middle School, there will be a large recycle cage visible.
We hope we will completely fill the cage. It’s very easy to do. A grocery bag full of cans goes a long way to filling the cage, if everyone can help us.
— Davis Elliott, Jeffersonville
Reader has questions about Web forums
Imagine my surprise when I went to both The Evening News Web site and the Hey Martha Web site and tried to get on the Jeffersonville forum. It has been completely removed.
A number of average residents like myself had expressed their opinions on numerous topics on the forum. All of these threads and posts have been taken away from us.
I’m not an overly educated person, but I seem to recall something about freedom of speech. Does that exist only for the media or does that also include the average citizen?
Can anyone at the Evening News explain why you chose to take away our forum? I hope it wasn’t because we were vocal about our frustration with local politics.
— Donna Kaelin, Jeffersonville
Editor’s note: The forums were removed because of time considerations in monitoring them and because of a small number of posters who repeatedly violated the standards of usage put forth by our parent company, CNHI. We are exploring ways to bring back the forums in a new format.
Reader enjoyed participating in forums
On June 30, without warning and without recourse, The Evening News and New Albany Tribune Web site, newsandtribune.com, removed their popular forums (discussion board) feature with this rather cryptic statement:
“The links to the Hey Martha forums have been removed for the foreseeable future. The decision was made to remove the forums because we could not adequately staff them to monitor the numerous future postings. However, we are designing some features on a new platform with new forums that we hope will encourage the same amounts of feedback and discussion among readers.”
The forums have been a very popular feature, gathering many posters and enabling a form of civic participation that has not been possible since our population became too big to hold inclusive town meetings. They have also broken some interesting and controversial stories and kept attention on other activities in ways that are not otherwise available to the general public, including:
1. The story of a prominent local attorney and his misadventures with trash cans;
2. The inaction of the county prosecutor on several pending investigations;
3. Credit card misuse by a local official; and
4. Problems with management of a local homeless shelter.
The obvious question therefore must be asked: Were the forums removed for the stated (non)reason or was pressure applied on the management of the paper to have them removed?
And the follow-up questions: Who will start a discussion board to replace this one and how quickly will they do it?
— Ronald L. Repp, New Washington
Editor’s note: All the above numbered issues and stories have been covered extensively in The Evening News. It is true that some people do not like the forums, but they were not removed because of pressure from anyone in the community.
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