There was a special NAACP branch meeting where action was taken with respect to the Jennings appointment last evening (not supportive of the school board). Over a dozen NAACP members plus a few community members were there. Enough to conduct business. I was not disappointed by the outcome because it came on the heels of a school board meeting, there was minimal outreach work, it was boycotted by executive committee members, and the branch officers refused to send out notices to the membership.
Another special branch meeting open to community members has been scheduled for Wednesday, October 8, 2003 to receive membership input and support on the disposition and direction of the Hollman Settlement Decree. Time: 8:00 PM Place: Zion Baptist Church. There is a possibility that the meeting space will be open prior to 8 PM to allow for some informal discussion about the Hollman Consent Decree before the special branch membership meeting is convened on October 8. I think that action by the NAACP related to Hollman is necessary and the interests of the Hollman plaintiff class will be harmed by NAACP inaction at this time. The City does not plan to fulfill its obligations under the Hollman Consent Decree with respect to the replacement housing prior to the current 2004 deadline. Court supervision over the Hollman defendants will end in 2004 without a motion by the NAACP and / or Legal Aid to extend Court supervision. I think it would be a mistake to leave the city unsupervised before it fulfills its obligations to the plaintiff class. It would be a mistake to not ask for stiff monetary penalties against the City for further delays (the city needs an incentive to get the job done on time). And it would be a mistake for the branch to get in the middle of a dispute between HUD and the City over funding for replacement housing the City is obligated to build. I plan to attend the Green Party membership meeting tomorrow and have asked to be given 3 minutes to give a report about the Hollman situation. By early next week I plan to do at least one more post about the Hollman / Heritage Park funding situation and respond at greater length to comments by Dean Carlson (MPHA project manager) about that allegedly inaccurate article by Doug Mann that was run by the Pulse. THAT INACCURATE PULSE ARTICLE A couple of allegedly major inaccuracies in the Pulse article which I addressed in an initial response to Dean Carlson were based on information in the court record which Carlson admits were correctly quoted in my reply to his comments. The problem is that Dean Carlson doesn't agree with my interpretation of what Judge Rosenbaum meant when he wrote, "When the consent decree was entered, the parties ambitiously agreed upon a seven-year program within which to complete the project. In a thousand different ways, however, the realities of life humanity..." "Seven years has simply not been enough time..." My interpretation: The parties originally agreed to finish the project within 7 years, including the replacement housing. The Judge's decision to extend the Court's supervision under November 1, 2004 was based on a request by the plaintiff's to extend the court's supervision and a promise by the City to complete the replacement housing project by November 1, 2004. After delving further into the mysteries of the Hollman Consent Decree I discovered that the Met Council had not fulfilled its obligations with respect to the replacement housing at the point that the Judge released the Met Council from court supervision due to an agreement by the parties to end the court's supervision over the Met Council. That doesn't square with what I wrote in the Pulse article. It is curious that Dean Carlson overlooked that rather glaring inaccuracy in my pulse article. As of October 2002 the Met Council had not completed 150 of the 482 Hollman replacement units the Met Council had agreed to acquire / build, according an October 2002 report by Dean Carlson. The City had only completed 96 of the 298 Hollman replacement units it had agreed to acquire / build. I am sure that the City would also like to be released from the court's supervision before it fulfills its obligations under the Hollman Consent Decree. -Doug Mann, King Field REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
