With the impending temperatures up to 50 degrees in the next few days, I was out chopping ice off the storm sewer grates. And I was thinking "I KNOW that the streets department guys, with rumors flying of layoffs and pay freezes aren't gonna do this at all or in a timely way". My next thought: "ESPECIALLY the surburban employees who don't know and don't care about Cooper that much!"
And then something hit me. Residency. Thanks to their suburban legislators, Minneapolis' ATTEMPT to get residents doing our neighborhood work was clobbered a few years back. "I wanna live where I wanna live" is how the employees put it. And their choice NOT to live in one of our neighborhoods, despite the privilege of civil service work at our expense, speaks volumes to me about what they think of the relative liveability of our neighborhoods. And THAT, for those of you who never worked in city government, is what NRP is about. I've read all the exhausting arguments about the quality of democracy, but democracy means diddly in this case because elected officials do NOT plow or repair the streets. Civil Service workers do this work. And most, or at least many, refused when given the chance to commit to the city that committed to them. Moreover, when I tried to get the past CM of Cooper to learn MORE about what t hese non-elected people do, that CM called it "micromanagement". She didn't know and she didn't WANT to know (for those of you who love the non-profiteers, she now has a job at one of those agencies, where I'm sure her attitude is more tolerated). Anyway, we may all get a chance to vote yes or no on our CM, but that CM is only DISTANTLY related to what happens in your neighborhood. Who really matters is someone you will never get to vote for. And if they are insolent or incompetent, your CM won't get them fired, either. Bottomline: ONLY NRP gives ordinary residents direct input to neighborhood priority selection. I'm sure that is why it became an election issue once. The ideal of government accountability vanished when the civil service fled to the suburbs, the state legislature said "that is their right" and the CM decided it was too sticky an issue to take citizen input on poor civil service performance (and a lot of these people HATE AFSCME, so don't try to say "its the fault of the unions") and blew off complaints. Trust me, I've been at the union meetings where suburban employees bitterly contested the decision of the membership NOT to strike. Non-resident employees are sure their compensation is never enough and we city taxpayers are able to dig deeper. -------------- Jim Mork--Cooper "Only a LUNATIC would cut schools in order to pay for more bombs." "We hold these truths to be self-evident....that the just power of governments derives from the consent of the governed." Declaration of Independence Get your free Web-based E-mail at http://www.startribune.com/stribmail 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
