3 Council Members NRP Commentary JLS--I wish to thank Council Members Goodman, Lane and Benson for putting together their "straight talk" about the NRP in view of the poor financial situation in which the City of Minneapolis and its taxpayers/stakeholders find themselves in January 2003. I hope the honorable council members recognize that the many neighborhood activists working to find solutions to the NRP funding problem and to continue the successful program are as sincere, concerned and dedicated to the general welfare of our fair city as any other Minneapolitans. ==========
RE: [Mpls] Goodman, Lane, Benson Commentary NRP Resolution Goodman, Lisa R [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tue Jan 21 16:24:00 2003 Straight Talk About Sharing The Pain. Strong neighborhood organizations make for strong neighborhoods and strong neighborhoods have made Minneapolis one of the most livable urban cities in the United States. With this in mind we, as three of your elected members of the City Council, want to address the long term funding issues and structural organizational issues facing the City as we prepare to approve the city's five year budget priorities. We call on neighborhood associations, activists, and community leaders to work with us as your elected representatives to help us figure out the future of the NRP. Resolutions like the one being circulated have little basis in the financial reality we face together as a City. They only serve to split the community and the neighborhood groups into factions that will end up competing with each other for resources rather than focusing on planning for outcomes. ========== JLS--Perhaps the trust level among neighborhood associations and activists would now be higher if the Council and Mayor had "led" late last year and worked with the community interest, neighborhoods, and other jurisdictions representatives on the NRP Policy Board to "help us figure out the future of the NRP." City leaders, past and present, seem to ignore the multi-jurisdictional nature of the NRP and one of its core purposes of bringing greater collaboration among jurisdictions to better serve the residents of all Minneapolis' neighborhoods. The NRP statute was established by the State Legislature in 1990. The Legislature amended the NRP statute in 1996 to expand the permissible uses of NRP funds. Some officials seem to take the position that there an inherent contradiction in both empowering and funding municipal services through the neighborhood level, the "building blocks" of the city? The point is well taken about the need to avoid competing factions fighting over scarce resources--affordable housing advocates, environmentalists, the construct of different neighborhood types, impacted versus non-impacted, etc. Some have said that NRP ought not to have been about building up smaller-scale bureaucracies at the neighborhood level, but rather about defining and delivering necessary, valued and efficient local government services to city residents. Some may recall near the conclusion of the January 11 meeting with NRP Policy Board members and neighborhood board presidents (and many others) how Council President Ostrow harkened back to the core principles of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program. ========== We face serious challenges as we move forward as a City to address our economic and community development issues. Developing and sustaining healthy, safe and affordable neighborhoods, with living wage job opportunities and a sense of community can continue. Bringing all voices to the table for an honest discussion has been our desire all along. Straight talk, whether the message has been hard to deliver or hard to hear, has been a priority for us and we will continue to tell the truth and hope you take our efforts at face value as we proceed down this difficult path. ========== JLS--The neighborhood associations and activists have stepped up to challenge what many see as a power grab. People are concerned about losing meaningful input into important decisions affecting our quality of life. We're still waiting to hear from the other key "players" from the other governing jurisdictions on the NRP Policy Board. Are the other jurisdictions going to continue to participate in a second phase of NRP? Some would say that some jurisdiction(s), to be blunt, were drawn to the NRP since for them it was merely a cash cow. The Mayor and Council certainly have the capacity of "bringing all voices to the table for an honest discussion." Work with the NRP Policy Board and set up a series of well-publicized community wide meetings, fora and other new technologies to discuss the new financial realities, facilitate that open and honest discussion, and solicit ideas for new ways of doing business. TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
