wroteECCO [EMAIL PROTECTED]
If there's a favorite son candidate like Gurban in a process, it can be very discouraging to outsiders, and they may pull their applications for that reason. It's a rational thing to do in the circumstances. You may fear that you don't have a chance against the internal candidate, or you may fear that your candidacy is not really being considered: that the outside candidates are just window-dressing, and the result is a foregone conclusion.
The number of drop-outs is a sign that the external candidates, at least, don't have faith in our process. Maybe this should be a wake-up call.
The first paragraph explains this year but what about last year? The Minneapolis Park System is a real jewel in the crown for people in parks careers -- or at least it used to be. Who has been contacting candidates during the last to years and what have they been telling them to encourage them to back out?
Last year it looked like the push was for Von der linde (spelling?) to be offered the position. He is on the Minnesota Recreation & Parks Association, otherwise known as MRPA, an organization of sports equipment vendors and a group closesly associated with the Park Board's new Neiman Fields at the old Fort Snellling Polo grounds. Is there something shady about the financing of these fields that Fine and company are trying to keep under wraps? Something Von de linde couldn't agree to work with? He drops out and -- BOOM -- Jon Gurban, the MRPA executive director, gets dropped on everyone from nowhere in an apparent back room deal that netted the 5 votes necessary to shove him into place without any real background checks or discussion.
And once again Gurban is being thrown at us by moves that make the "Process" look like an expensive sham perpetrated at public expense in an expensive search process that the same "Gang of Five" appear to be hijacking once more.
Thank god election year is just around the corner!
Steven M Nelson
Willard Hay
http://citizenshipchronicles.blogspot.com/
Get UP! Get OUT! & GET INVOLVED!!!
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