[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Perhaps it's worthwhile to wonder why Republicans have a "cartoonish" view of the city. Before moving here six years ago, I lived for 14 years in MoorhWM: I read, in a respectable urban planning treatise about 20 years ago (the citing for which I cannot now remember), that cities over 50,000 are impossible to manage cost effectively and sanely. I will add to that that the older a city is, the more layers of reform one has to wade through to accomplish even the simplest thing.
ead. I'm pretty well informed.... But I was really, truly stunned at how bad Minneapolis city government can be. I'm still surprised on a regular basis as I learn more about how this city has spent itself into virtual bankruptcy--and how they constantly blame the state, the feds, and anyone at hand in order to pass the buck.
The legislators know more than the average well-informed citizen like me.WM: Say what? It is true that my legislators know the ins and outs of the bills they work through and I do not. However, on more than one occasion I have met with my legislators to inform them of how something works out in the everyday lives of their constituents. My neighbors and I have taught them a thing or twelve over the years, and different ones have mentioned that to me from time to time. My attitude is that my vote put them there, so it's my duty to follow through when they get there and keep an open pipeline for communication. After all, it's the EFFECT their decisions have on people that they cannot garner from the halls of the state capitol.
And why should they ride to the rescue?WM: It's their job to keep state money in balance? It isn't a rescue? It's parceling out the money we contributed to the pot in ways that benefit the contributors? Our taxes are a way to amass our collective money for big projects and on-going costs?
Sometimes you have to let someone you love hit bottom before they'll be willing to accept the help they need to recover.WM: To begin, the above statement is insulting to Minneapolitans; it's condescending.
It's been my contention from the beginning that RT and his fellow campaigners hugely overstated the direness (if that's a word) of the economic situation facing Minneapolis. It was AFTER the election for mayor and city council that the legislature cut LGA and other funding which Minneapolis figured to be part of it's allotted budget. The one thing we did in the last local election go-round that was a mistake in hindsight, was the library referendum. It might not have been, had loss of LGA funding not cut the library's operating budget by 1/5 of it's paltry $22 million/yr.
Mind you, how the city spent the collective money is also at issue, but it is a separate issue.
Almost anywhere you go in the US, cities are democratic strongholds.
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