Present from the MPRB was the usual cast (from left to right across the dias or whatever it's called):
Diane Hill - ____ Secretary
Jon R. Gurban - "Interim" Superintendent
Don Sigglekow - Assistant Superintendent for Administration and Development
Rochelle Berry Graves - Commissioner at Large
Carol A. Kummer - Commissioner, district 5 (far south, Nokomis)
Annie Young - Commissioner at Large
John Erwin - Commissioner at Large
Jon Olson - President / Chairman, Commissioner, district 2 (far north)
Bob Fine - Commissioner, district 6 (far southwest)
Vivian Mason - Commissioner, district 4 (near southwest, near north, downtown)
Marie Hauser - Commissioner, district 3 (near south, downtown, Cedar-Riverside)
Walt Dziedzic - Commissioner, distrct 1 (northeast)
Assistant Superintendent for Operations (Judd?) Schmidt
Assistant Superintendent for ?? (??) Merrifield
Assistant Superindendent for Finance (??) Rekirk (?)
[sorry for any errors on the last 3 -- reading their name signs at a distance in the audience is hard and I didn't bother to walk up after the meeting to get them right.]
Mercifully absent was Brian Rice, "Counsel".
At 5pm, the Administration & Finance committee met. Chair of this committee appears to be Marie Hauser. Apparently the revenue from the cash cow [my label], the golf courses, is flat. So increased fees and different "frequent user" arrangements were discussed. Nothing exciting or unusual here except to realize that those golf courses aren't producing lots of profit like they used to.
Then there was some talk about Lake Calhoun concessions and boat rentals, doing it in-house or contracting it out. Initially staff made it sound like it was profit making, but really, the boat rentals made money and the concessions lost about $12,000. But wait -- under questioning from Annie Young and Rochelle Berry Graves (if memory serves - not in notes), it's determined that some labor costs associated with boat rentals were improperly charged to concessions. This kind of poor financial control has apparently been an on-going problem for years. Berry Graves pushed to get it fixed once and for all this year.
My take -- cost accounting is not rocket science. What's the problem here? Surely there are qualified accountants on the MPRB staff. Why aren't they being allowed to do their jobs correctly?
Then the topic of the Paddleford Packet Boat company's discontinuance of its Minneapolis operations and move to St. Paul came up. MPRB staff said negotiations were proceding normally and they were as surprised as anyone at the article in the Star Tribune today about it. Walt Dziedzic said he called the writer, Joe Kimball, and tried to call Lou Gelfand to complain. Dziedzic complained that Kimball was completely one-sided and unfair, didn't call anyone at MPRB, etc. Dziedzic then rambled off into how much it costs for fraternal brotherhoods and other groups to rent to park facilities and how Paddleford got off with paying much less -- just parking, it seems (not sure on this point). Dziedzic may have had a point to make here, but it sure wasn't clear what it was, other than to run Kimball down in his absence. MPRB staff thought they could find some other vendor to fill the spot, since the "venue" was so great and the demand "strong".
We will see.
Then the Planning Committee, chaired by Bob Fine was called at 5:45pm. There was a presentation by staff about proposed increases to application fees for building and access permits. The permit program cost at least $30,000 to run last year and took in about $15,000 in fees. The City of Minneapolis took out a lot of permits, but based on some sort of policy, weren't actually charged any money for them. However, MPRB pays the city for each permit it takes out from the city. Staff said they wanted to increase the application fees and make the City pay for theirs in order to get into the black. Comm. Hauser thought it would be good to do that. Comm's. Erwin and Young (and Olson?) thought they should look into some sort of arrangement where the City stopped charging MPRB, and vice-versa, so as to reduce cost of all that extra bookkeeping. Otherwise, this seems fairly non-controversial.
Then the regular meeting was called to order at about 6:15pm by Olson, who then opened the public comment period. A Mr. Johnson (sorry, first name escaped me) and a Mike Nelson were to speak. They were absent.
I was third on the list. I gave them both barrels, burning all my bridges no doubt, and received a "Thank you and have a nice day" dripping with sarcasm from president/chairman Jon Olson. I'll be lucky if I don't start finding dead animals on my front porch, as others who have angered the Fabulous Five Commissioners have discovered. My brief remarks were:
"The taxpayers have been asking for honest figures on the purchase and renovation of the Park Board headquarters building since the summer of 2002.
It's now 2004.
I would appeal to the better interests of the majority of the commissioners, but not everybody has a better interest.
Instead, I will appeal to your self-interests. Everybody, even the majority five commissioners, has one of those.
* The public has not forgotten that they were excluded from the meeting when the Park Board headquarters building was purchased.
* The public has not forgotten the rush to get a Marina built on the river.
* The public has not forgotten how five commissioners made a mockery of the process of hiring a superintendent.
* The public has not forgotten how commissioners abrogated their fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers in renting the Wirth house to the MRPA.
So here's where your self-interest comes in. The public is tired of your unethical self-dealing. We are watching. And there will be consequences."
For those of you coming late to the game, the Fabulous Five Commissioners (holding a majority of 5 to 4 over our fine, responsible four public servants) are: Jon Olson, Bob Fine, Walt Dziedzic, Marie Hauser and Carol Kummer.
Then Comm. Annie Young asked about progress in getting the meetings aired on cable TV and an audio feed for TPT (I believe). "Interim" Super Jon Gurban answered this question by saying "It's going fine," and continued to talk about how they are studying the situation, analyzing the tasks and costs, visiting other places to see how they do it, etc. etc., and that ultimately by the end of February they would have a report on it! Staff added they have a 45 day window (?) and would come back with a "thorough solution."
Comm. Dziedzic then stated he would "vote Yes on cable TV every time" it came up, but also stated that in reality very few people ever watch the City Council or School Board meetings on public access cable. I wonder how he measured that?
There was some talk about lobbying the state, with an agenda of 5 items, for bonding, but I didn't get good notes on it, sorry. I did note that while most folks are of the viewpoint that the stats is not about to give Minneapolis, not even its Park Board, another thin dime, Dziedzic thought they would. I admire his optimism in the power of schmooze. If he can get us money out of the Pawlenty administration, more power to him.
Two new committees were created, and Jon Olson appointed Bob Fine to represent the MPRB at the city Board of Estimation and Taxation. One committee was a legal review committee, to be chaired by Bob Fine. The other was the superintendent search committee, to be chaired by John Erwin.
Comm. Dziedzic wants to get an outside, professional accountant to certify the numbers for the headquarters building purchase and renovation to squelch complaints about them being inaccurate.
He wants those numbers to be given to me -- oh, and to Comm. Mason who has been asking for them for months, maybe years. Incidentally, I know that another member of the taxpaying public requested those numbers, too, but staff seemed seriously stressed out about giving them out before getting the ok from the commissioners or something.
Then it was time for the 6:30pm public hearings on the Webber tot lot renovation schematic design and the Reserve Block 40 renovation schematic design. Staff presented their designs. Members of the neighborhood spoke about how wonderful the staff was to work with and how great the designs were and their hopes for implementation. It was all optimistic and congenial, and the two projects appear to have gotten the thumbs up (I don't have the agenda, so Aye votes on item 4.7 or whatever were not 100% clear to me -- my fault for not grabbing a copy on my way in).
What most impressed me about these two small parks and their renovation plans is how much effort the MPRB expended making sure the neighbors were happy. There were three (3) community meetings each for these parks, in addition to at least 2 presentations to the neighborhood organization. That's wonderful; that's as it should be. These projects are in the $200,000 range, and there's some outside money involved in at least one of them.
There were zero community meetings about buying the park headquarters and renovating it to the tune of about $5.6 million (according to the MPRB's own figures). In fact, the commissioners meeting where the decision was made was even closed to the public, from what I read in the archives of this list.
There were zero community meetings about building a marina.
There were zero community meetings about who to hire as superintendent.
Public hearings were closed and the commissioners returned to the remaining new business items of their regular meeting.
There was discussion and much confusion about the $200,000 the Mayor said he was giving [did he say to whom? I suspect he did not] for more trees to be planted. MPRB has an approved motion to accept $100,000 and that will plant about 1000 trees -- on public property. Comm. Erwin had a meeting with some folks from the City and got some preliminary talk about another $100,000 going to subsidize tree purchases by property owners for private property. There was also some discussion about where the public, MPRB trees would be planted, with the words "impacted" neighborhoods and those with fewer trees (for whatever reasons -- looks like a big can of worms or at least hard feelings could be opened there) being tossed around.
There was presumably one other item remaining, but I didn't catch it and Dziedzic moved to adjourn the meeting and it was adjourned about 7:30pm.
Not quite the fireworks of the Dec. 17 or Jan. 2 meeting, but informative nonetheless.
Oh, and as far as I know, no media reporters were present.
Chris Johnson Fulton
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