Steve Brandt reports in todays Metro section of the Strib that MPRB "has struck a nearly $3 million deal to buy a riverfront building for a headquarters and maintenance base."
In the second to the last paragraph he reports that Commissioner Vivian Mason strongly opposes purchasing the property and states her reasons. I recall first hearing of this proposal and wondering why buy on the riverfront which seems to me to be fairly fancy digs for a maintenance base if nothing else. I assume this is more than a place to fix lawn mowers and weed whackers. Maybe I am mistaken in which case I am certain I will be corrected. It wasn't so long ago the City of Minneapolis built a new maintenance facility on Currie and a radio shop on Royalston. Certainly someone must have been able to foresee the needs of MPRB and could have consolidated operations. By no means am I suggesting MPRB lose its independent status in the total picture of our city's governance. But governance is one thing and good sense operations is quite another. Of course this is backward looking and we all know the saying about hindsight. The fact is though that we have not been served well by departmental bureaucracies which have tenaciously clung to their power bases. So what is to be done? I would suggest that MPRB take a couple steps back and a few deep breaths before finalizing this deal if at all possible and consider other more radical ideas for solving their space requirements if they have not done so already. They might also examine their motives to see if they are not guided in some degree by what I call "corner office syndrome". Tim Connolly Back with a vengeance and still alive in Downtown West. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! - Official partner of 2002 FIFA World Cup http://fifaworldcup.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
