SUNDAY COMMENTARY: This Is Villa Hills?

The Martin Chronicles reporters have been spending a great deal of their time speaking with long-time Villa Hills' residents. Some of them lived in the area even before the City was formed. Most are shocked to see the rapid, steady deterioration of their community. Many of them see Mike Martin's mayoral administration as the culmination of that decline.

But some things haven't completely changed:

• The morons who populate the Civic Club's Dead Pecker's Row have always sat around griping that "the City wants to take us over";
• There has been a contingent of residents who have wanted the taxpayers to underwrite the dredging of their private lake for many years;
• There have always been people who went ballistic when they received a ticket for parking their car on the street during a snow emergency;
• There have been people who became extremely rude when the City didn't deliver bags of ice and care packages to them during extended power outages for ages;
• Tree huggers have always complained about the lots behind their homes being developed. We guess tree-killing should stop immediately after the tree hugger's house is built; 
• There have always been members of St. Joke's Church who whined that the filthy, toothless homeless guy who gets the $150 jogging suit that parishioner donated to the Christmas Giving Tree (EXPLETIVE) well better appreciate it!;
• Crazy residents have always expressed concerns that the construction of a Mister Softee Whippy Dip store in their neighborhood would attract gangs, hillbillies, hot-rodding, rock & roll, profanity, rumbling, binge-drinking, bikers, Bilderbergers, street-brawling, Sasquatch, spitting, knife-fighting, chain-fighting, cage-fighting, car-bombing, dirty dancing, varmints, juvenile delinquency, mumblety-peg, drugs, zip guns, gambling, disease and prostitution - you know, kind of like any council meeting Mike Martin presides over;
• Virtually every resident loathes any form of tax increase almost as much as they loathe even the slightest reduction in City services.

But now it's somehow different. The community has split in to three well-fortified camps. There are those who see the real problems in the City Building. There are those who remain in support of the current administration, perhaps because they still believe the mendacious Martin's tall tales of woe. Lastly, there are those who-by chance or design-remain uninformed.

As one longtime resident put it, "It's almost like rules and laws don't matter anymore. Some people just don't seem to care."

Yes, some things have truly changed-for the worse. Sadly, perhaps in an irretrievable way.