Chris Johnson wrote: Today as I went past Armatage Park, I noticed 2 Park Board employees "working" to build an ice rink. One employee was holding a hose pouring water on the ground. It would have been as effective to lay the hose on the ground and let the water run while doing something else more useful. The other employee was standing there, holding a hose with no water coming out of it, talking with the other guy.
I'm sure you all have seen similar public works efforts. It's where jokes about how many people does an orange MnDOT truck sleep, and how many people does it take to fill a pothole come from. The point being, despite the fact that most of us probably also know "deadwood" in the corporate world, there never seems to be quite as much inefficiency, bureaucracy and feather-bedding as there seems to be in government. <snip> Spending $144 million at CPED/MCDA, $96 on "Unidentified", $96 million on capital improvements, $60 million on the city coordinator and $36 million on the convention center raise a lot of questions when we are losing 120 police officers. Spending $16 million on the Neiman Sports complex "white elephant" at Ft. Snelling and $6 million on the Park Board "Taj Mahal" HQ when there are questions of keeping swimming beaches open, pools open, grass mowed, buildings maintained, etc. is highly suspect as well. <snip> Why is CPED getting a 40.7% increase? As best as I can tell, virtually everything CPED does is optional and not part of the core City services of police, fire, utilities, etc. Moreover, they have had a reputation for over 20 years for being grossly inefficient and constantly suspect for spending tax dollars to arrange corporate welfare for a few favored developers. $2.3 million for the Communications Department? Just what do they do that helps the city welfare when it comes to crime, fire and medical safety, street safety, clean water, functioning sewers, etc? Similar questions arise over the rest of the increases listed by Mr. Hodges. Minneapolitans may wonder why politicians who make foolish "no new taxes" pledges get elected and supported. Minneapolitans may wonder why suburban legislators are willing to cut critical programs over and over, and why their constituents support such things. Some may wonder why the so-called Taxpayers League even exists. One of the primary motivations for those things is that ordinary folks are fed up with government wasting money. We all see it in our everyday life, and it makes us suspect even more is wasted elsewhere. There are folks -- lots of them, judging by the past few elections -- who feel as my parents do: they're environmentalists and they're educated, reasonable, thinking people. They're somewhat socially liberal. But they vote Republican because they feel they have to in order to cut the government down to a sane size. They believe government is too large, too expensive and most of all, too wasteful. It has become a self-perpetuating organism that operates as if tax money was endless and free. Taxpayers are tired of government waste. Mark Anderson replies: Excellent post Chris! You hit it dead on about why so many people vote for tax cuts when there are so many un-met needs out there. People are tired of government wasting money. And it's not just because of lazy workers as you discussed, like with the two guys holding hoses. Even when government people work hard (and I'm sure there must be some who do), it's still a waste of money if there are no benefits. A good example of that are all the directors reporting to each other that you talked about. They are all so busy talking to each other and trying to please the whims of council members, that what do they actually produce? Of course you made a lot of good complaints about the government, but you were a little short on answers. In my opinion, most of the problems of government are inherent in the system. The suggestions of the Strib to improve Minneapolis government were mostly good ideas, and would probably improve the effectiveness of the city government. But government will never be as effective as private markets in providing the goods and services that people want. That's because when consumers spend their own money to get what they want, they generally do a pretty good job of spending the fewest resources for the highest amount of satisfaction. In the government, one has three groups of people, voters, taxpayers, and government consumers, that play the same role as the consumer that buys his/her own goods. Each of these groups have different agendas. Even when those groups consist of the same people, there is so much filtering through the government of the spending, decision-making, and consuming, that usually the people don't end up with the results they would make on their own. So the best way to minimize waste is to confine government spending on truly public projects that can't be done by the private market. And yes, I am getting around to Minneapolis in my rant. The city spends so much time and money on subsidiary projects that they end up cutting money to projects that truly benefit the public. Public security is one of the areas of spending that benefits the public, and yet we cut it when we are doing so many other things that the city shouldn't be doing. I have my doubts that adding 200 officers would have any affect whatsoever on the crime rate, but at least that's where the city should be focusing its effort. Examples of things the city should stop spending its money on: -- Subsidizing buildings, i.e. the Sears building and new housing. -- Planning. Planners are the folks who come up with all the new places for the city to spend its money. Of course they are all "investments," not expenditures. I don't think the city has the omniscient ability to know which spending will truly result in a return. We've all seen that in the past most of these ideas result in future spending, not benefits. -- Park programs. I keep hearing everyone say what a great reputation Mpls has in the country because of our great parks. Well, it's all the Mpls green space that has made this reputation, not all the money spent on programs. The park board should keep up the green space, and save the taxpayers the rest of the money. -- Library programs. A library is there to provide books to the public. But the Library Board has decided they need to lend out music and art, and create programs for all sorts of different folks. Maybe if all their money was spent on lending out books, they'd have enough funds to keep the libraries open. -- School luxuries. The purpose of public school is train the kids to be ready for adult life. There's a whole lot of things the schools do that don't further this goal. We've had much discussion previously on whether the arts are a fundamental part of this training, so I won't belabor that here. My biggest bugaboo with the schools is all the field trips they go on. Almost all do not further the goal of training these kids. At least the schools are moving in the right direction. In the last few years, the Mpls schools have focused a lot more on making sure all kids have a basic knowledge of reading, which is the fundamental building block of all other academics. -- NRP money. Whenever anyone has brought up the waste created by neighborhood spending of NRP funds, Jim Graham's response is that the city wastes even more money on their programs. Perhaps he's right, but I think that's a good argument to cut wasteful city spending also, not to keep the wasteful neighborhood programs. These are just my immediate thoughts on unnecessary spending by the city. I haven't made an analysis of everything it spends, so I'm sure there are lots more cuts that should be made. We shouldn't just be trying to make city programs more efficient, but should be exiting the programs that don't make sense for the city to be doing. Mark V Anderson Bancroft REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? 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