The Hennepin Conservation District was defunded by the County Commissioners due to a rapid descent into dysfunction that to my understanding arose, shall I say, from a specific and particularly destructive personnel occurrence. My knowledge is very indirect so I will not venture to say more.
I believe the HCD is a valuable body. It provides assistance, education, cost-sharing, etc for responsible water and soil protection practices. It also serves a useful role in implementation of state wetland protection laws, where its role as a neutral and credible technical body is very helpful in gaining landowner compliance with these laws. Alot of the HCD's work, when it is operating, is in the western part of the county, where remaining agriculture, horse farms and rapid development have perhaps the greatest impact of any area on the quality of the water that comes into Lake Minnetonka and down Minnehaha Creek. One of the candidates, Mike Wyatt, is the planner for the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, an organization with which I work as legal counsel. Mike is young, smart, honest and very interested in sound collaborative public policy. One of the efforts he presently is driving involves engaging the cities on Minnehaha Creek (Mpls, Edina, Hopkins, St L Park, Minnetonka) and the MPRB in an effort to develop (and move to implement) a long-term vision for the creek that protects the creek as a natural feature and prevents it from simply becoming a channelized stormwater conduit for the developed area. He's working with the US Army Corps of Engineers and congressional offices to maintain a stream of federal funding for the process. (His canoe trips down the creek with interested project partners recently made the front page of the Strib, with photos -- maybe it was the metro section.) Mike indicates that his first priority as an HCD Board member will be to reestablish the trust of the County Board and help the body regain its footing. His web site is www.wyatt4hcd.com. Chuck Holtman Prospect Park Date: Mon, 25 Oct 2004 23:27:28 -0500 From: David Weinlick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [Mpls] Soil and Water conversvation To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed You can learn a little about what they do from the Election Guide put together by Getting to the Bottom of the Ballot (www.getbob.org), which was also published in the October 11-24 Southwest Journal. At this point, however, the job of the Hennepin Conservation District (which is the Soil and Water Conservation District for Hennepin County) is somewhat unclear. The HCD was recently de-funded by Hennepin County, so its only operating funds come from statutory requirements. Essentially, the budget for HCD dropped from approximately $750,000-$900,000 (depending upon tax revenues) to approximately $30,000-$50,000. The staff of twelve dropped to a staff of one, and the scope of the HCD's duties narrowed dramatically. Much of what the HCD supervisors will need to do in the coming term is determine how they can shape the HCD's future, if it is to have one. It continues to exist because it was instituted by statute (103C), and is the required entity for handling a small amount of dedicated funding (that's what's left in its budget). As far as I know, its supervisors are elected because that was how the statute set it up. You can check out the HCD website--http://www.hcd.hennepin.mn.us/ David Weinlick Armatage On Monday, October 25, 2004, at 04:15 PM, Jeremy Wieland wrote: > Does anyone know what a Soil and Water Conservation Poo-Bah does? Or > why > they're elected? > > Jeremy Wieland > Northeast ------------------------------ 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. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ 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
