Response to points raised by Mr. Connolly:
I support examining whether integrating facilities management, information
technology, garbage collection, police protection and any other duplicative
service among the City and the independent boards can save money and/or
improve service. People don't want their taxes to go up but they want more
service. The only way to accomplish this is to become more efficient in
service delivery and consolidation could be one way of doing this.
I think that the assertion that the Park Board is environmentally friendly
and the City Council isn't paints too much of a black and white picture. I
think that the current deep division on the Park Board is traceable in part
to different ideologies on the Board. There are some Park Board members
who put environmental issues at the top of their list and some that human
services (youth programming for example) higher than the environment.
Likewise, important environmental actions have come out of the City also.
Some that come to mind are the Mayor's Clean Water Partnership (cleanup of
the Chain of Lakes), the City's sanitary sewer/storm sewer separation (so we
no longer dump raw sewage into the river), the storm water treatment program
(now that we no longer send our storm water to the Pigs Eye treatment plant
we need to let contaminants settle out before sending storm water to our
lakes), and the brownfield cleanup program (cleaning up toxic soils which
are around the City from times prior to regulation of toxic chemicals).
Ultimately, both boards have to account to the same voters for their
actions. Because of this, it is pretty unimaginable to me that the City
Council would wholesale sell off parks to developers if they oversaw the
parks. There isn't a neighborhood in this city that would sit by and allow
its park to be sold off, no matter whether the oversight was by the City
Council or the Park Board. I think the idea of putting land in a trust is
an interesting idea to explore in ensuring that land would never be sold for
development purposes.
On the other hand, I would also explore whether setting a cap on the amount
of land that could be banked, given the unrelenting expansion of the park
system over the last 20 years, along with the associated costs. I
appreciate that people feel willing to pay more for parks. The problem
comes when we start adding up the list of other services that, when asked
about, people say that they want better of (schools, parks, libraries,
police protection, fire protection, affordable housing, etc). In total, the
bill gets beyond what most people can afford.
I also would argue that many people in Minneapolis (the vast number of
people who don't do things like post to public policy lists) don't
understand that there is a second city government (the Park Board) making
policy on streets, police, garbage, etc. Accountability for the Park Board
is difficult when no one knows that the Park Board exists. Accountability
may actually increase if the City Council took over some of the Park's
functions because visibility of those actions would increase. I think that
the Star Tribune's decision to not spend a lot of time covering the Park
Board speaks volumes to this part of the question.
Carol Becker
Longfellow
_______________________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy
Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more:
http://e-democracy.org/mpls
