-----Original Message-----
Barbara Lickness
Doug Grow said:
"The Neighborhood Revitalization Program in Minneapolis has turned the
city into a maze of little
neighborhood fiefdoms, each clamoring for dollars for local projects.
Seldom do the activists in these organizations see the city as a whole"
Greg Luce said:
"Although Grow understandably uses columnistic color to make the point,
I think it is a good point--the fragmentation that results through the
promotion of NRP and its neighborhood system. It's the downside to NRP,
and I'd like to see more "city-wide" thinking from neighborhood groups
in the future.
Barb Lickness says:
"Just how many neighborhoods have either you or Doug Grow been involved
with to make a blanket statement like this?
<snip>
Examples of that are: CSNAP (The group of neighborhood people along the
Nicollet Av. corridor from Lake to 62 crosstown), The Lake Street
Revival group, the Central Av. group, the central neighborhood
partnership, the neighborhoods by the lakes that produced the "Clean
Water Cookbook", the neighborhoods that started the "Blue Water
Commission". There are more collaborative efforts as well.
The biggest collaborative effort was the one where all the neighborhood
folks joined forces to save the NRP.
[TB] I didn't read anything into either Doug Grow's column or Greg's
comments on it that said NRP doesn't have any good points. I agree with
Greg that Grow has pointed out the fragmentation of the City. You do
not need to participate in all of the City's neighborhood groups, even
any, to see that this has happened any more than you need to work with
senior citizens or in the health care industry to know that many have a
problem with the cost of prescription drugs. You can recognize a
problem without being effected by it or working directly with it.
Participation in some of our neighborhood groups is greater by paid
staff than it is by those who live and work in the neighborhood. I
don't think that is what the framers of NRP intended, I think the
program was intended to be driven by those who live and work in the
neighborhoods. There are actually a few neighborhoods in Minneapolis
who have not hired any paid staff.
The NRP Central Office does little to help the neighborhood groups
administer themselves. For example any organization that receives and
spends money needs to keep records of how that money is received and
spent but each group is expected to figure out their own way of keeping
those records. The NRP Central Office is more interested in approving
plans, they don't really help in developing the infrastructure to carry
those plans out.
NRP should work to identify what is important. After a decade of the
program it has been clear that a number of the neighborhood groups do
not have the capability of executing these important projects. There
isn't a good evaluation that determines if the city as a whole is better
off if money is spent on a project in neighborhood A vs. a project in
neighborhood B.
Terrell Brown
Loring Park
terrell@terrellbrown .org
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