I have time to monitor Internet material farly closely and I also make it a point to see what hits the local evening news. I don't get the Strib any more but I'm not that concerned because we get plenty of heads-up traffic on mpls-issues. I have to wonder about the thinness of the all-points bulletins that came so frequently from the Center for Neighborhoods but not from other news sources. I tend to discount the explanatory posts that came from my long-time acquaintances Jack Kryst, Bob Cooper, Keith Ford and even Steve Cramer and Bob Miller. And I know better than to have expected press releases from the much-abused members of the Legislature whose lives are only now returned to them and their assistants. Seems to me the lack of volume or breadth of coverage of the imminent implications of the NRP debacle derived from an inability or unwillingness or preoccupation of our main municipal voices - the mayor, the president of the city council, the chair of the NRP policy board - who have publicity machinery at their disposal that surely dwarfs the resources of the Center for Neighborhoods, this modest discussion network, and the agency staffers mentioned above. There has been a terrible blow to years of emergent capacity for self-governance. We are all awake now, the thousands of us who understand the opportunity for improvement of our urban situations. I trust that additional resources will be brought to bear on the suburban jurisdictions who have so indulged themselves at our expense. Minneapolis remains the giant economic engine of the region and it will not do to have that entity seriously out of sorts over a few million dollars withheld for less than compelling policy reasons. But in the here and now, with all sorts of contracts and intentions poleaxed by a supremely indifferent faction in the lower house of the legislature, we need something more substantive for Minneapolis than an insider study group and a hand-wringing report. We need something more dramatic from our leadership than we will get, I fear, and if we continue with the same leadership we may well have coal in our neighborhood stockings for years to come. Fred Markus Horn Terrace Ward Ten _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
