I may agree with Michael Atherton's premise that NRP should be mainly spent on Housing and Neighborhood Revitalization. I even find myself, (biting my tongue), agreeing with Greg Luce on the matter of the purpose of NRP being housing. (I will seek counseling tomorrow). That being said I find Michael Atherton's post so filled with sour grapes that it puckers my mind just reading it. From it I do not get the feeling that Michael minds where the money is spent as long as politicians decide where it will be spent. What Michael seem to really resent is that his neighbors pack the meetings with residents to decide the matter. What a heinous crime. Michael also seems to resent the fact that this unwashed mass does not vote the way smarter people like he and "elected" representatives think best. These resident people actually IMAGINE they know more about what they, the residents, need than does Michael and the politicians.
We the residents of Ventura Village had the same kind of gall, so we packed meetings with "Residents". Then we captured Ventura Village's share of NRP and reallocated it to what the neighborhood had set as its priorities, Housing and Crime&Safety. Ventura Village of course set a few dollars aside for other things like fixing up the Franklin Theater into Franklin Art Works, but the vast majority was reallocated to housing. The Mid-Town Phillips community, just to our south, just did a similar prioritizing of issues to address their needs this past month. "Recent Immigrant" Latino family people and Latino homeowners dominated that meeting. Guess what? They came up with the same priorities as the non-Latino "Old Immigrants" and Native people in the neighborhood five years earlier. Public safety, small retail service in walking distance, and housing were their priorities. The important thing was that this was what we and they felt was necessary for revitalization of our community. We of course came under no little criticism from non-profits who felt our NRP dollars were rightfully theirs. I also remember being personally accused by a social-service employ of that same heinous crime of stacking meetings with residents. So Mr. Atherton, don't be mad, just use your superior intellect and organizing skills to bring a larger number of residents to the meetings to vote the way you want. That's the beauty of the NRP and Democracy. The person who brings the most voters wins. Of course I might be presumptive in thinking Mr. Atherton thinks he knows best where the NRP should go. After all he has said that the elected officials know better than residents about spending money. If they are smarter than Mr. Atherton then perhaps we do not want him making those decisions. Those Government leaders who did the Brookfield deal, the Target deal, tore down thousands of affordable housing units, and have created our present budget surplus, surly are smarter than Mr. Atherton, but I think neighborhood residents may be just a little smarter than both. Of course those residents did elect those politicians so perhaps Mr. Atherton has something. We need someone like Vicki Heller to look up how much NRP may have been wasted, and then to compare that number to the bad "investments" which the Council has made during the same period. Then we will be able to judge who has wasted more, or who has made smarter investments. I don't know about the rest of the "List" readers, but my money is on the politicians wasting more money. The race does not always go to the swiftest, or the fight to the strongest, but that is where the smart money lays. So I am willing to bet real cash money, maybe as much as ten dollars, that our elected politicians have wasted a WHOLE LOT more money, and made stupider investments of Minneapolis tax dollars in the last ten years. Any takers? The problem for Michael seems to be that he can not trust residents not to vote to spend money where they think it will do the most good for their community. Their "special interests." I have to laugh at the idea of politicians not spending on their own "special interests". As one Chinese agent said, he was not surprised that you could buy American politicians; he was just surprised at how cheap they were. Politicians can be "persuaded" with small contributions, to give millions of dollars to some special interest. (Brookfield, Ryan, Target, and any number of other "special" friends). I will bet that even the politicians thrown out of office last election are still pulling in big "Consulting" fee green from those special interests today. Michael is worried about NRP neighborhood residents wasting a nickel on the dollar that they are making a thousand percent return on. He doesn't seem to be concerned about his "Wise" politicians who have wasted several hundreds of millions of dollars in the last ten years. No, I think that school, and those children, will do more to revitalize Prospect Park than Saks or Target. So I will support Prospect Park residents investing in the minds of "their" Kids. Jim Graham, Ventura Village - in Metropolis >>>"There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies and revolution into minds" - Toe "The people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty." - Thomas Jefferson<<< > 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
