Thanks to everyone who has commented on our Ace Hardware situation. Jay Clark's critique gave me pause and made me think, "Why DIDN'T I hold a neighborhood meeting?"
This is especially disquieting for me since I've sort of gained a reputation as a neighborhood-meeting-mad board president. In the past year, we've held community meetings to talk about transit issues (bus hub and bus routes), a treatment program that wanted to build a 70-bed unit in our vacant nursing home (Prodigal House), a charter school that wanted to go in the same facility (they dropped out suddenly), a liquor store that wanted to add a hard-liquor license (Westrum's)...I didn't need to think twice about any of those. It was obvious. Why didn't I think it necessary in this case? Even weirder, even before Jay's post, we were already planning neighborhood meetings for the Kingfield blocks if the Ace Hardware houses end up in our neighborhood. There are only so many volunteer hours in the day, and you have to draw the meeting line somewhere, but Jay has a point: if I lived next to what would become a parking lot, I'd want to lobby my neighborhood group, too. Perhaps we got swept up in helping Ace's cashflow, and then helping try to move the houses, without thinking of the next-door folks. The only solace, I guess, is that there are bright orange notices posted on both front-yard trees at the homes, I assume about the public hearing at City Hall. People do have a chance to lobby the people who actually make the decision: the City Council. However... those orange official notices are all but impossible for passers-by to read because the trees are up a hill. Politicians would not restrict themselves to brightly-colored sheets of paper when running for office; why not institute readable-from-a-distance, lawn-sign-and-rebar signage for properties with potential neighborhood impacts? Guess we all need to do a better job getting the public info. Learning by doing, David Brauer King Field - Ward 10 > -----Original Message----- > > Great problem, and one that is repeated in difference permutations > throughout the city. > > For me, the most important job of the neighborhood organization board in > a situation like this is not to debate the pros and cons of the _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
