Re: [Mpls] Baseball

[Bert1956]

In response to the arguments about other development:

Several poor decisions (subsidizing the Target HQ, Block E, etc) do not justify more poor decisions (Stadia). We (Mpls voters) had a chance to punish those who made the first set of bad decisions, and did so. We will also do that, I predict, to those who make poor decisions on the stadia. By the way, just to offend everyone equally, I'm also against the Guthrie subsidies.

The city should be a developer of last resort only.

I might add that the cancer of our modern urban government is the perceived need to build (and build and build) commercial properties, and to prime the pump for that building, because our elected oficials perceive (corrrectly) that residents are unwilling (not unable) to pay the real costs of living in a city the size of Minneapolis. They would rather that it be subsidized by big commercial development, be it downtown or elsewhere in the city, so as to lower the residential portion of the levy. Due to that inability of residents to take the financial responsibility of paying the actual costs of city government (and any politician who would so propose would be guaranteed defeat at the next election), our city government becomes a development agency rather than a deliverer of services paid for by the governed, with their consent.

This is a real shame.

I am not anti-business, simply upset that to save their political skins from homeowners who would perceive an increase in their out-of-pocket property tax costs as a burden, instead of looking at it as a liberation from the development money-go-round ( and its insidious relative - TIF) our city must beg for development.

I would suggest, gentle-list-members, that "we have met the enemy and they are us", to quote Pogo, a citizen who was smarter than he looked.

Bert Black
King Field