Thank you for your answer David, Terrell where did you get the information for your opinions on NRP? I always suspect people wanting to consolidate NRP with power Downtown could be a shill for downtown interests. I choose to believe that Terrell is simply miss-informed. NRP dollars are a small price annually for the involvement of "actual" community members in the development patterns of Minneapolis. Fortunately Minneapolis receives far more than just this benefit from NRP. Remember Downtown's "Comprehensive Strategies" usually favor large sweeping development and large developers raking in tax dollars without addressing problems that residents feel are important to them.
Remember also that "Comprehensive Strategies" also came up with tearing down our housing stocks and replacing them with suburban style housing. THEY came up with financing for Target and many other boondoggles like Garbage transfer stations and black listing poorer neighborhoods. They came up with shutting down Nicolett and building K Mart. Neighborhood groups involved in community building very seldom think of destroying their own communities and displacing existing residents, that is invariably the decision of Downtown and paid for politicians. It must be galling for politicians and powerful development groups to be compelled to take into consideration a Neighborhood Group who has been empowered by the NRP process. "How dare this riffraff think they can make decisions about their own lives. If they were smart they would live in decent communities like us". Their police force even tell Minneapolis residents they should move if they do not like the crime problems. (I personally think any Minneapolis employee making such a statement should be immediately fired, but that's a different Post) If looked at from a pure Benefit/Cost analysis of dollars spent to value received, (also in dollars), NRP outshines any, AND I REPEAT ANY, development strategy that Downtown has yet come up with. Sure there have been some glaring problems with fiduciary oversight in some neighborhoods like Phillips, Central, and Whittier. That fiduciary oversight was the responsibility of "Down Town" and usually involved favorite Downtown interests and with neighborhood residents pleading with down town to put an end to the misappropriation for years before action was actually taken. For an example of this look at Phillips. Residents pleaded with City Hall to stop the hemorrhage of NRP dollars for at least three years before action was actually taken. Even so with the remaining balance of NRP dollars the Neighborhoods that rose out of the ashes have created well over 120 million dollars in new development and been used to renovate hundreds of older homes. Ventura Village alone has over 100 million dollars of development committed along Franklin Avenue in addition to fixing-up grants for approximately 100 houses. The residents in Ventura Village seized not only the remaining 1.4 million dollars of NRP dollars they seized control of the future and that of their children. Down-Town "Comprehensive Planners" are going to face a revolution if they attempt to regain that power. Perhaps Terrell does not believe he can do his own planning but those in Ventura Village KNOW they can; and they KNOW they can do a better job than downtown. They look forward to partnering with Downtown not serving it. Sales-Belton and a couple of other City Council members are no longer in office because they hinted they were going centralize NRP decisions downtown. I remember meeting with RT when he was first thinking of running and telling him that NRP and housing were the hot issues not airport noise and the new library. The same is still true and RT and the City Council would be well advised to pay heed. Come out on record that they are going to respect autonomous neighborhood control of NRP or be prepared to face the same result as the old power brokers. Do not promise to save NRP and then listen to some advisor about centralizing and "Comprehensively Planning" for it to be taken away. The comprehensive planning the neighborhoods and voters want to hear about is how you are going to provide for the involvement of comprehensive strategic planning that the neighborhoods are already involved in doing into your Minneapolis Plan. At a national conference on Federal Empowerment Zone, the head of this department of HUD said that the most important benefit for an "Empowerment Zone" was the "Strategic Planning" that the community engaged in. That this was far more important than the few million dollars they received. In visiting "Empowerment Zones" in several other American cities I would have to say she was correct. The major shortcoming of other cities was that they failed to include resident and community in their strategic planning. Many were paying money to consultants to try to have such involvement, but having difficulty. They were envious of the level of community activities going on in Minneapolis. Because of the strategic planning coming out of NRP Minneapolis did not just have "Strategic Empowerment Zone Planning". Minneapolis had an entire city that was being actively and strategically planned on an ongoing basis by the true experts on community development - - community residents themselves. Not only that, but Minneapolis has an entire city who has been so empowered as to throw out the politicians who hinted they might take this power away. Even the National Director of Empowerment Zone Program admitted that Minneapolis was very lucky to have such involvement. I have had some concern about rumors that have circulated that on the basis of the McKenzie report NRP will be consolidated "Downtown" with Planning. NRP is not broken, it is doing fine so don't let its enemies try to "Fix" it. Planning has problems so I would say, "FIX IT". The neighborhoods already do a much better job of planning, and have actual resident involvement in it on a comprehensive basis. Planning needs to stick to what it can do namely facilitating and coordinating implementation of the "Plans" of the communities, or coordinating the cooperation between neighborhoods to do planning for areas that cross boundaries. Let the NRP neighborhoods do the planning strategies and let Planning coordinate and facilitate those strategies. May be have a " Strategic Planning Coordination Department" of NRP, and a Down-Town Development Planning Department. This would have each do what they are good at doing and remove each from dabbling in areas they have demonstrated abysmal failure at and little talent for. Jim Graham, Ventura Village - I Voted for RT because he promised to preserve NRP _______________________________________ 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
