Sounds like a lot of baloney (and other cold cuts) goes on a Park Board meetings.
Failure to consider "community engagement" has become epidemic as well as endemic throughout the City of Minneapolis in the last few years. The Park Board is doing nothing that the rest of the City has been doing for a while. Citizen Participation, once the pride of Minneapolis, has become a joke, and is now considered to be nothing more than a bothersome step along the way to doing what the politicos and their buddies wanted to begin with. It is a bit like calling it a chocolate cake when it is a white cake with white frosting, when all the "public" is allowed to do is put an M&M on top. Of course the M&M is immediately brushed off and the fat cats eat all the cake they originally wanted.
The food thing brings up an interesting question. Isn't a City official or staff person committing "white collar" crime if they are stealing the food that is paid for with City funds. Not even a piece of baloney should go home with any elected official or employee. It is an extreme conflict of interest at best, and taking even small items of City property sets a bad precedent. Next you will have park board employees doing yard work and tree trimming around a park board house.
I met with CM Robert Lillegrin recently for breakfast, (not on City business). Afterwards I started to pay the check and Robert grabbed it and said NO emphatically. That he would pay for it. When I laughingly pointed out that the invitation was by me and not City business, he said he did not even want the appearance of taking a pan cake from someone who did business with the City. Quite the comparison to taking food home to the card playing buddies.
Yes Scott, we need to begin to have more responsible elected politicians at every level. Not just because "our" baloney is being eaten by those elected and paid to take care of it, but responsible to listen and do what the public wants. The voting public needs to look very seriously at ALL of the elected offices and those that are not open to real "Citizen engagement" need to have either different people holding them or to be abolished as being no longer necessary.
Engagement means communication. Unfortunately, our elected leaders are hiring "Communication directors" and specialists in propaganda and spin doctoring instead of simply listening. Their idea of "Engagement" and participation is to control what is leaked to the public. Communication means listening also. The politicians are so busy listening to their "Communications" propaganda that they can't even hear when the public says something. That reminds me, if you want to see an example of real high priced "Baloney" and fluff, look at that "State of the City" brochure put out as a propaganda piece for our elected officials. I have mentioned this piece of fluff on the list before. All pretty pictures and no content.
Well my morning rant is ended, it's time to get out into the cold.
Jim Graham, Ventura Village, Ventura Village, Phillips Community, and the Sixth Ward of Minneapolis
'Without conflict communication and novel synthesis of information cannot take place. Conflict is the fertile soil in which creativity grows.'
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