(Proceed with caution 2,300 words, 211 lines)
I attended the "Minneapolis United Neighborhood Council"
meeting last night to coordinate the obtaining of 8600 or
15000, Anne says we need this many to actually get the 8600,
signatures necessary to get the proposed referendum on the
Nov. ballot. I was somewhat surprised at the number of
individuals who were more or less opposed to getting this
done.
(disclaimers) As most of you probably know I have been an
active community person since 1974. I have never received any
salary from anything related to my community activity, but I
did receive a $1000 rebate on a $8600 renovation to my house
through one of the NRP housing initiatives. Since I did the
work both of my neighbors have renovated their homes as well,
but I do not think that any NRP programs were involved. I
have been president of the Longfellow Community Council on and
off since the "80". I enjoy studying how the community has
developed and am truly amazed at the depth of knowledge and
problem solving ability demonstrated by the residents of this
community. Sort of like the new business model where the
workers are asked how best to do their jobs, community
solutions really seem to work best, however slow they maybe to
develop. I am socially liberal, but understand you have to
pay for what you get. I am confident that living in
Minneapolis has been a pretty good bargain. I believe in free
enterprise as long as competition is present and clean, when
competition breaks down give me government every time (I use a
Macintosh and really wonder who owns BFI).
The arguments mentioned at the meeting were pretty standard.
Political types saying that this might not be a winnable issue
and that irrefutable harm to the NRP program may be done if it
were voted down on the ballot. Organizers from the school
board referendum saying that we needed consultants and prior
approval of the Charter Commission. Proponents of affordable
housing saying the NRP program does not do enough for
affordable housing so continuing the program as is, that is
basically what the wording on the proposed referendum does, is
a bad idea. There maybe too many referendums on the ballot
this year or the city council is working on a solution were a
couple of others.
Now I may be a bit cynical, but I don't think the political
intelligentsia of this city knows all that much about what
makes a winning issue or how to make an issue winnable. I
would point to the governor and house as evidence. My take it
that folks are about fed up with spin and would appreciate
straightforward discussion of issues. "Do you think that NRP
is worth about $86 a year to you or not". If folks say "No"
then NRP was not doing what it was really created to do, build
a sense of community and ownership in that community by its
residents, and we all need to reformulate the program.
As far as getting paid professionals to "manage" the
referendum, what have the communities been doing for the past
5 years if not getting ready for this referendum? The
argument has often been made that community groups are not
representative of the community. I would argue that they are
representative of those who give a damm, but here is a great
way to test if the community in general thinks the community
group is representing them. NRP is clearly a community group
directed program so citizens can make a pretty unambiguous
choice.
The affordable housing advocates have a legitimate argument;
we do indeed need more affordable housing. I have a 22yr old
with a OK job and a baby that would love to buy a house in the
city, but there are none to buy even when his bank says he can
afford $120,000 (He can't afford that we all know that, but
the bank says he can). I do not sit on the housing committee
of LCC, but I know for a fact that 5 years ago building
affordable housing was not on the mind of very many folks.
The pressing housing issue then was the simple fact that
nearly all of our housing stock was 70+ years old and a lot of
it needed fixing. As I recall we had about 120 house on the
demolition list in those days and a pot of money was set aside
to leverage removal of those homes. The LCC housing programs
were targeted to fixing exterior roofs siding and sidewalks.
We were sort of fortunate that we received a huge influx of
insurance $$ to fix roofs after the wind and hail storms. We
had a huge number of 20+ year old singles that disintegrated
under the hail. NRP was very useful to a lot of homeowners to
get other parts of the structure fixed at the same time. This
was a case of great timing and is not likely to happen again
for a long time, mostly because the singles are new and will
likely last longer. This community has also seen a large
influx of "empty nesters" from the suburbs. Many having sold
a 5-acre home could practically buy a home in the Longfellow
community with the interest. This has dramatically increased
prices of homes, gentrification, and I think that LCC has only
one house on the demolition list. That is not to imply that
the issues of 5 years ago are gone, we still have a lot of
homes, some are rental, but most are owner occupied that need
fixing. Older folks on fixed income are being hit really hard
by increased property taxes caused by the increase in housing
value so they have even less $$ to spend on fixing the house.
LCC has responded by increasing the focus of our housing $$ to
the more needy houses and decreasing the interest of our
loans. That was NRP phase I, LCC is well into the discussion
of phase II and it is pretty clear that affordable housing is
very high on the list of things we need to do. The real issue
is where, we do not have available land, folks are concerned
about increased traffic, and the NIMBY factor is ever present.
Still much progress has been made, encouraging multi-use
buildings on our commercial corridors and actively finding
developers who are willing to do them. LCC is becoming less
reliant on MCDA to market our development prospects. MCDA is
still very important to most of our projects and have been
very pleased with their response. (see below on ??) LCC has
done very well by the letter of the NRP in regard to our 54%
spent on housing and has leveraged huge sums of private $$ in
the process, I am confident that as we go forward we will do
what is necessary to have affordable housing in this community
so that our new imports and children will have a place to call
home. Just remember that 5 years ago affordable housing was
not on the radar-screen, now it practically takes up the whole
screen. I must admit that as good as we are in forecasting
the future we could do better.
There were a lot of comments about the "leadership blowing
it" on this issue. I am not on this bandwagon, the die was
cast when the house leadership changed and the governor wanted
to leave a legacy of "Tax-Reform". I would agree that more
visibility, even for a losing cause would have been
beneficial, but there is no doubt the Mpls. city council,
mayor and elected officials tried hard to save NRP. There is
currently great buzz about the "special commission" that is
working as you are reading this to determine what can be done
now to rescue the program. I want to be very clear that my
preference is for the city council to simply raise the mill
rate to pay for NRP. I don't really want the mill rate
increased, fixed incomes are pretty common in LCC, but the
city has been running pretty lean the last few years and am
very opposed to BFI running the garbage collection, selling
the water treatment plant to DuPont or Microsoft or forcing
community groups to pay for trash pickup in commercial
districts. I have no doubt that the city can come up with the
$$ to fund Phase II-IV of NRP, but the point is that they have
not and time is running out for collecting signatures. I
understand that working on the city funding of NRP prior to
the final vote, if leaked, would have given up way too much to
the opponents. But, I have not heard a clear voice from city
hall saying, "We will fund NRP", perhaps on Monday:
City Council Joint Meeting of
Ways & Means and Community Development
Discuss results of Mayors Task force on NRP
1:00pm City Hall Room 132
Pretty important to Minneapolis issues folks
Until we hear that I would suggest that everyone get
everyone else to sign the petition for the referendum. As
most of the list members are aware there is a tension between
neighborhood groups and the council simply because
neighborhood groups are a breeding ground for opponents. All
neighborhood groups have to be careful in dealing with the
council so as not to give the impression of usurping the
council authority. There are bound to be clashes, and since
LCC has two council members the potential for conflict has
always been pretty high. There is an expressed conscienceness
at LCC regarding this issue and so far it has worked well. We
have mutually respectful open dialog with our council
representatives, as well as county and state. LCC respects
their elections as indicative of community representation, but
when the community disagrees LCC does not feel pressure to
back down. My personal experience has been great. Sometimes I
feel my representative is a bit timid (But then I started with
Zollie Green), but discussion has always resulted in a
win-win. The point here is that regardless of what city hall
may do the neighborhood group needs to stand up for what they
believe is right. In this case, we think funding NRP is right
and a referendum maybe a way to do it.
Until I know that NRP or a close relative will move forward
I am very opposed to pulling in our horns. The 7 years LCC
has been involved in NRP has been pretty close to magic in how
the community has started talking to one another, fixed up
housing and increased the "livability index". It could be
that the community was neglected for so long and there was so
much to do that so much has happened, but I am pretty sure
that the greater Longfellow community would have a
dramatically different character if not for NRP. No Brackett
Park building, erosion control or overlooks on the river
gorge, playgrounds in schools (especially no handicapped
accessible playgrounds). Lots fewer trees in our urban forest,
no windows on the street side of the Fairview clinic, no
bungalow book. Hard to say what would have happened to
housing if NRP had not "primed the pump" to clean up our
housing stock prior to the influx of empty nesters, they may
not have come home again. For sure the Minnehaha Academy
construction and community impact would have been very
different. Doweling gardens, the oldest community garden in
the nation, could be housing and none of it affordable. I am
sorry that some folks had to pay for lighting they did not
want and that some felt their great ideas were not taken
seriously, but I would question if any other forum would be
different. It is not possible to please everyone all the
time, but it is possible to find a solution that nearly
everyone can live with.
Before I let you off the hook and shut up, I have one more
issue. The issue of "Pay Back" by the Republicans has been
brought up in a couple of posts and I would like to give my 2
cents on this issue. Perhaps it was not the Mpls. DFL the
house was against; perhaps it was Bloomington or Roseville or
Eagan that initiated the conservative crusade to tank TIFF.
>From my vantage point it seems as though Minneapolis has done
pretty well by the TIFF districts and we had a vibrant
downtown, one where people actually live, and neighborhoods
that were really returning to their community roots. Perhaps
block E and Target were a bad deal, but you would be hard
pressed to show that by history we should no do them. Now a
library may be a TIFF stretch so perhaps some TIFF reform
should have happened, but when the house voted to freeze the
58 million in neighborhood allocated funds that so smacks of
vindictive behavior that most other arguments melt into
babble. I think this makes a very potent argument against any
Republican revival in Minneapolis. I think I can make a
pretty good argument that pro-life and acceptance of diverse
sexual orientation are not such bad tradeoffs for a party that
shows such vindictive behavior. I am really in favor of
multiparty government, so I wish the Greens and Independence
parties well. The two party system is way too polarizing when
victors take revenge as a guiding principal rather than good
policy.
I have very little faith that any group could raise 8600
registered voter signatures in less that a week, that the
wording will pass muster with the Charter Commission or that
voters would approve it, but if we call ourselves community
activists doing nothing is simply not an option.
Go Minneapolis - keep our neighborhoods and downtown strong.
Have at me, but I already know it is too long.
DeWayne Townsend
Greater Longfellow, East End
Minneapolis, MN 55406
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