What I want to see different in Louisville in 2021

How do we even begin to talk about 2020 withou… hold on.

*grabs handle of bourbon; throws rocks glass in the trash*

That’s better. Where were we?

Ah, that’s right: 2020. The wet sock of years. The double yellow Starburst of years, if you will. If there was a 2 AM fire alarm prank during a hailstorm of years it was 2020. The squeaky grocery cart of the 21st century. The bane of my existence. The two thousand and twentieth year of our Lord was quite literally a poor wifi connected zoom call. It was going to the dentist every day and still having cavities. It was the “we’re calling about your car’s extended warranty” of time periods.

My 2020 felt both as long as it takes your crush to respond to a risky text and as short as the time period after you hit the snooze button.

What started as a pretty normal year was turned upside down in an instant. I was engaged, had a reliable job, I was managing a different, but successful website. Life was, dare I say, normal?

Then COVID-19 hit. At first, my job as a restaurant manager felt incredibly safe. You can’t get laid off as a restaurant manager. People always need to eat. I was wrong. In fact, I was one of the first to go. Next, came the unemployment stage, or, lack thereof. Then the subsequent scramble to find a job, and the questions that came for many in the spring of 2020. What will happen with my bills? My house? My car? My wedding? Will I be financially stable? Can my fiancé support me? Do I have insurance anymore or am I just screwed if I get this thing?

I think we all remember that panic. I was one of the lucky ones. I was able to finish building my house, find a new, stable job, and maintain some semblance of a normal life.

Still, 2020 was a kick in the nuts. I had to cancel my (now) wife’s dream wedding, for which we had been saving for two years. We were married with eight others in attendance, socially distanced. There was no honeymoon. No traveling at all, in fact. All year. No friends, no extended family, no school (in a traditional sense), no church, no eating out. So much of our normal lives changed in 2020.

But 2021, though? 2021 isn’t going to be much better.

I know people are going to go out and party like there’s no pandemic. Society is going to celebrate that this god-forsaken year is over. There’s a vaccine. We did it. Yay.

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But, the reality is that you are going to wake up for the foreseeable future and things aren’t going to be much different. Sure, 2021 represents new opportunities. We have reached the low of lows. So low, in fact, that it’s hard to imagine 2021 being worse. To that, I will halfheartedly raise my glass.

2021 likely won’t see a massive step forward. We are still going to enter the new year in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. We will still wake up to millions in debt. More businesses will close. More people will fall ill. More will lose their jobs. Returning to life as we knew it pre-2020 is still a ways away.

For Louisvillians, I think that this especially important to keep in mind. I’m ready to move forward. We all are. But we still have some matters to settle first.

As we move toward a sense of normalcy once again, we know there will be more days that make you wonder if you’re suffering from Louisville allergies or experiencing COVID symptoms. But the turning of the calendar represents a light at the end of the tunnel.

Let’s take a look at some things I’d like to see change in Louisville in 2021.

A serious look at a Louisville NBA team

The NBA to Louisville movement has been gaining backers over the last few years, but does it matter? It just may now more than ever.

After insisting that the the NBA had no immediate interest in expansion in 2019, the financial implications of 2020 have persuaded the league’s commissioner Adam Silver to consider otherwise.

“I think I’ve always said that it’s sort of the manifest destiny of the league that you expand at some point,” Silver said while talking to media members Monday, via ESPN. “I’d say it’s caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion. We’ve been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic.”

NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver on December 21st, 2020

The likelihood of the league taking decisive action either way in 2021 is low. However, its time that the city of Louisville get behind the NBA2Lou movement once and for all.

The city was close to drawing a franchise in 2008 when the Seattle Supersonics franchise ultimately became the Oklahoma City Thunder. But an expansion team is completely different territory altogether.

Cities like Seattle and Las Vegas may be the leaders right now for an expansion squad but they may not have the appetite for basketball that Louisville does. Louisville consistently leads the country in college and NBA viewership. The University of Louisville and University of Kentucky are two of the top five most profitable basketball programs in the country. Add in the fact that Louisville already boasted the winningest ABA team of all-time in the Kentucky colonels.

Louisville has one of the best arenas in the country in the 22,000 seat, state of the art, KFC Yum! Center, and the city’s central business district is set up to perfectly accommodate visitors and opposing teams.

As with all things, there are those who would oppose this movement. However, Louisville is a stagnant city in one of the poorest states in the country. The NBA has a fantastic product but needs to find a way to bounce back after hemorrhaging money during the 2020 bubble. These are two parties that would mutually benefit. The economic growth that Louisville could see from the addition of an NBA team is immeasurable.

The NBA2Lou already has seven different groups under Non-Disclosure Agreements that have shown interest in ownership. Now, it’s up to the city to make a more public push. My hope is that 2021 is a year where we inch closer towards making an NBA team in Louisville a reality.

Get the TopGolf ball rolling immediately

The most petty Louisville topic of discussion ever has been the absolutely mind-boggling back-and-forth of litigation between Top Golf and the city of Hurstbourne.

From arguing that the lights are too bright and the drinks are too big to tying up zoning permits, claiming that they were incomplete and inaccurate, the argument between a very small, but loud contingent of Hurstbourne residents and Top Golf has been nothing short of embarrassing.

There’s even a pretty professional website, topgolflouisville.com, that lays out why this argument is ridiculous.

Look, I’m not going to go on some long diatribe about why this is asinine. Just consider this, Hurstbourne residents: You live right next to two major shopping malls, just off one of the busiest roads in the city of Louisville. You did this to yourselves, folks.

Again, the goal of 2021 should be growth. Hunstville, Alabama and Chattanooga, Tennessee have a freaking Top Golf. If Louisville can’t get one, what the hell are we doing here, guys?

A return to school for the kiddos

Perhaps the most important piece to help us return to a sense of normalcy is simply getting children back in school.

I am a huge proponent of protecting our educators, and our children for that matter. In 2020, it simply was not a viable option to have Louisville children in school full-time.

However, as we come closer to defeating coronavirus, it is crucial that we get children back in class and back to a sense of normalcy as soon as it is safe to do so.

Humans are social creatures, and to have children having to receive an education in an extremely challenging distanced learning environment it tough for all of us. We must put our future generations first.

We also must consider the ramifications of children falling behind. Yes, some kids were able to keep up with their schooling in 2020. However, many in Louisville do not have the financial means to learn on a level playing field.

The city of Louisville must take into account the fact that a transition back to in-person learning will hit some children and families harder than others. In 2021, I’d like to see increased funding for Jefferson Country Public Schools specifically to help disadvantaged youth.

Further accountability for Louisville police officers

Maybe the most disheartening part of being a Louisvillian in 2020 was seeing my city become a the focus of social justice moments for all the wrong reasons.

After a completely botched police raid resulting in the death of Breonna Taylor in March, the Louisville Metro Police Department has become the focus of some embarrassing scandals. Publications from the Courier-Journal to the New York Times to the Manual High School newspaper have exposed years of LMPD and Kentucky State Police botching investigations, ignoring protocols, and overspending.

A system with a history of systemic racism, redlining, and racially-charged arrests has seen little change in a year that saw a historic movement for social justice.

Many police officers are heroes. They are well-intentioned public servants who have become caught up in a messy situation. However, 2020 saw Louisville become the nation’s poster child for corruption. City leaders used half-hearted PR tactics and essentially covered bullet holes with Band-Aids, all while improving an increased budget for LMPD in 2021.

A May 2020 audit by the Louisville Metro Council yielded astonishing results, that a Metro Councilman called “sloppy accountability”. This gross mismanagement of funds saw millions of Louisville taxpayer dollars used on police overtime and other expenses.

From the top down, Louisville’s police department has been a failure in leadership in every possible way. From mismanagement of funds to inappropriate, even deadly, policing tactics, the city has a long way to go to earning the trust of its citizens.

What I would like to see in 2021 is a complete restructuring of the Louisville police force. I want to see taxpayer money spent wisely. I’d like to see better training instituted, stricter enforcement of police body cameras, and a cutback of hot spot policing.

A return to crowds

From music festivals to sporting events and everything in-between, part of what makes experiencing Louisville so unique is events when people gather.

We saw very little of that in 2020, and what “crowds” we did have were obviously socially distanced and wearing masks.

In 2021, I hope to see a bustling Louisville football game. I want to see Forecastle, Louder Than Life, Hometown Rising, and Bourbon and Beyond. I want to see the Kentucky Derby and all of the things that accompany the festival.

How much of this is actually possible remains to be seen. However, until Louisville is able to gather, we won’t be able to experience our city as its truly meant to be.