Steve Cramer was quoted by Dave as saying: "the property tax reform package is under funded, relying on the "good times" to generate enough state revenue to take over school funding and maintain local government assistance. When good times become less good, what will be the first to give?" Steve is writing as head of the MCDA. I respond as a 50 year resident of Minneapolis. A resident of Swedish Lutheran lineage. As such I wish to refer to a lesson in the "good book". For those not in the know, there are two "good books" in the Swedish-Lutheran-American tradition. The first is the book of recipes used traditionally by the women of the church to prepare hot dishes and such. This book is not the one I wish to quote, but it is a fine book none the less. The book I wish to reference is the other "good book" used traditionally by the ordained males of the church as the basis for worship and providing order and wisdom to our lives. These days I might add that even females are allowed to use this book. As you might have noticed in the news of late, it has been a stretch however for us to become totally politically correct. I apologize to our GLBT community because although some of us are working hard to allow members of your community to lead us in studies from the good book, it has been somewhat of a public struggle to accomplish this. Being of Swedish descent however, we are liberal in sort of a conservative and shy way, and we do our best to quietly welcome all who wish to share some coffee and a bit of the Good Book on Sunday. This brings me to the first reading provided by Steve: "When good times become less good, what will be the first to give?" The lesson to be learned, as I read this script, is that these are good times and when the less good times come, it appears from Steve that there should be some sort of trepidation on our part as to whom might have to bear the brunt of dealing with these bad times first. I suspect Steve doesn't believe he and the MCDAers should be the ones forced to deal with bad times. The "Good Book" also gives us a reading here which might help us lay out a plan of action. It has to do with a guy named Joseph, a technicolor coat, the Pharaoh and it all ties into a musical that somehow connects to the MCDA (I think it played in one of their Hennepin theaters). The lesson is simple. It refers to seven good years during which we must prepare for seven bad years to come. For many Americans that means paying down credit card debt so when the bad times come we have credit left. I'm not sure that is a proper interpretation of this scripture. Now I know there will be countering opinions to my thoughts, and I wish I was sharing this in the traditional Swedish-American Lutheran tradition of discussing lessons, politics and such. That is to stand by the coffee pot on Sunday, munching on a donut, and then quitely slipping into the conversation something like, "hey, do you suppose that perhaps, maybe, it might be possible that this MCDA outfit is following the good book and they are just on a seven year plan? You know, we are in the good times so lets invest in things to prepare us for the bad to come? About that time Sven says (there really isn't a Sven in our church but we do have a our share of Olafs, Gust's and a Thor) The way I hear it if we give all this money to the MCDA folks, they have all these people with great wisdom to make decisions for us, and if we let them, they will lead us to the good times that are yet to come. But...... if the good things are all yet to come, doesn't that mean we are in the bad times now? Or are these the good times with gooder to come? Now Sven isn't necessarily the brightest bulb around the coffee pot but he might have stumbled on something. According to my interpretation of the script according to Steve he feels we have to keep giving the MCDA the money they need now, in the good times, at a level high enough so that when the bad times come they still keep getting all the money they want. This is where the Steve and the MCDA starts to blur into all the other government type preachers. You've heard them, the apostles for the library, the park board, the schools even the water department. The street and sewer people need to hire someone new though, we actually cut back on what we will spend to fix their needs. I mean no one will notice for awhile. All of the others have upped their collections to apparently take care of business during these good times. This leads them to take a bigger and bigger portion of the harvests generated by Minneapolis folks. Following Joseph's lead I think most folks in Minneapolis are OK with this. The problem is, as I see it (Sven agrees with me here) that they are not following the complete plan of Joseph. There is not only no intention of preparing us for the bad times, but they continue to demand no cut in their collections even if and when those bad times come. What is worse, from what I see, they are not even doing the equivalent of paying down their credit cards during these good times. In fact it seems they are doing the opposite with expenses deferred and future operating costs that they don't know how to fund. I wish we had a good Pharaoh to go to here, but then we live in a democracy today, so that role falls back to the people. The question that I would ask the people of Minneapolis then is this, should the MCDA be the source of all our development wisdom that prepares us for the not so good times in Minneapolis? If so should we all up our giving to make sure we pay the extra money to make them happy? Or should we hang on to some money ourselves in each of our homes and at the same time make sure the neighborhood fellowships (NRP's) are well funded, hoping they can better plan for what each neighborhood needs? And, as a closing thought for the week, if we do have to give them the good times funding for seven years, will they all leave us alone for the next seven? Bob Gustafson SW __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35 a year! http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
