Steve Cross writes, of the Strib's Wednesday Block E story: > To the contrary, I don't think it "connects any dots" regarding the > city's development process. At a minimum, it's inconsistent with the > recommendations of the McKinsey Report. The whole point of that report > is that "we gotta do something to free developers from all the > blankety-blank rules at City Hall."
I think this is a subjective and inaccurate interpretation of McKinsey. While there are undoubtedly rules/regs that need to be re-examined, the report deals more with coordinating the rule-reviewing at City Hall. Also, it should be noted, I made no link to McKinsey in my original post. My comment on "connecting the dots" was merely that Mack provided fascinating detail about how exactly Block E received inconsistent approvals and not everyone in city government was on the same page. Lisa Goodman, not Mack, made the McKinsey link in the story, but that came at the very end of the piece. The essence of Linda Mack's story - and it is repeated in hundreds of other circumstances - is that there was no single place & time where the city officials with a hand in Block E's approvals met and compared notes. There is an MCDA coordinator, as Mack notes, but he only reviews fiscal details. Planning/design functions are not only split off, they are split between the council and the planning commission. Since you brought it up, Steve...the McKinseyian idea is that a unified city development system where *some* non-elected official oversees the process of city planning as well as city financing would better prevent this from happening. I am not necessarily endorsing McKinsey, but since Mack story illustrates the confusion of a decentralized system, it does illustrate a problem the report is attacking. > That only proves that it isn't that hard > for developers to get around what the city says you have to do. If > anything, what apparently happened with Block E is an argument to > toughen the rules, not to make them faster and easier, so no one can get > around those rules again. Again, I think the story and McKinsey is agnostic on these particular rules. The question is how best to enforce whatever you decide to have. > The story's inclusion of the spider-web graphic from the McKinsey report > was also unfortunate. That's because that graphic is erronious. A > graphic may be as good as 1000 words but THAT particular graphic is as > good as 1000 erronious words. Why? > My ultimate point here is that controlling development is a complicated > matter particularly when you want the development regulation to be both > fast and correct. The McKinsey Report as well as "connecting the dots" > from Block E are simple answers but they are also wrong. I think McKinsey's answer to structural reform may be too broad or wrong, but the Block E story's process details indicate they are asking the right question. David Brauer King Field _______________________________________ 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
