In a post on 21 Feb 2005 titled, "Politicking and the NRP", I wrote:
When the Cedar-Riverside West Bank neighborhood has a 82% turnout of
voters eligible to vote in the November 2000 election, how can it be
ignored that a 1% turnout, at about the same time, of residents eligible
to vote [for authorizing expenditure of $1,500,000 NRP funds], occurred?
Cedar-Riverside West Bank and the City of Minneapolis in total generally turn out about 70% of voters eligible to vote. The year 2000 example above is not freak data.
The time has come to determine for the other eighty neighborhoods in the City, how their turnouts to authorize NRP millions of dollars compares to their corresponding turnouts in [city] elections.
C-RWB's miserable turnout of 1% means that for each 1 NRP vote counted, 99 were not. I have a hunch that the results will not be significantly different for the average of the other neighborhoods.
Will the neighborhoods research their files and bring in the harvest
and let it be seen? To avoid any misunderstanding, I'll restate:
Will the individual neighborhoods post, for votes on NRP big buck authorizations, the number of persons present and voting, with dates?
[Johnson writes now]
There has been a ZERO response from any neighborhood to my call for such data! I am really not surprised.
Those neighborhood activists know well that they can't prove anything close to even a puny democracy in their """neighborhood decisions""".
The neighborhood activists, who hustle out to neighborhood association meetings, think they know best for the 99% of residents who aren't there, viz., the General Bullmoose syndrome.
[Bergstron writes]
We must find a way to engage and retain the thousands of new citizen activists that raised their voices in 2004.
[Johnson writes] Bergstrom attempts to continue the propaganda, referring to the "thousands". How about some data to support this assertion?
I'll give you some facts from the NRP Headquarters website:
In Summer 2003, NRP Headquarters mounted a campaign to rally its troops against CM Barret Lane's proposed ordinance regulating future NRP funding.
NRP Headquarters set up five neighborhood meetings across the city to allow "citizens" (read: 'activists') to appear and show support for NRP activities and funding.
Only a total of 330 people attended those five neighborhood meetings. That is probably only a few more than the paid staffs of the 81 neighborhood citizen participation and community development organizations.
Still NRP claims to have neighborhood participation/engagement, and to have democratic participation/engagement of residents. NRP Headquarters has recently come up with the artifice of "focus groups" to substitute for real citizen/resident participation!
So the NRP Headquarters 'party line' is still promoted by such as Bergstrom.
But compare today's Strand post:
If the NRP program recieves taxpayer funds shouldn't all taxpayers have a voice at least at the level of their neighborhood?
[Johnson] Strand is getting closer to the requirement of Minnesota Statute 317A.441(b) which requires that all residents, not just taxpayers, be able to vote in neighborhood organizations.
But the neighborhood activists persist in the myth of 'great citizen participation' in Minneapolis neighborhoods exhibiting a great show of
'representative democracy' even though apparently only 1-5% of those eligible to vote, actually do vote to authorize projects involving large sums of NRP money.
How much evidence does it require for NRP to be dismantled and brought BACK into the City government which build this great City. The City Councils in past years built this great City, and certainly before 1991 when NRP was formed,
Those City Councils for and with the City's businesses, and residents voting at the ballot box in significant turnout, built this great City,
A puny few activists, many of whom are on the staffs of the neighborhood organizations and community development corporations, did
not build this great City.
Bob Johnson Cedar-Riverside West Bank
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