On 9/3/05 2:43 PM, "wmmarks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Mark Snyder wrote: > >> Until we see that, I'll stand by my point that McLaughlin hasn't had to make >> the same choices with NRP vs. other city needs that Mayor Rybak and the city >> council has, even if he was one of the architects of it in the beginning. >> > Then you have missed the point entirely. It isn't the funding alone > that is at issue, though Rybak's supporters always want to spin that > way. Rybak and the council have systematically undermined the principles > of the NRP. They created CPED out of MCDA as the vehicle to undermine > the principles of the NRP. They cut the partnership we were building > between the police and the citizenry of the core city. They did it to > take power away from citizens and hoard it to themselves and keep their > taxes high, though they think they're keeping them low.
Actually, I don't think I have since pretty much all of McLaughlin's promises have been about money and pretty much all of the complaints coming from the various NRP supporters have been about money. Also, I'm pretty sure there were other reasons why CPED was created than to "undermine the principles of the NRP" - notably, I seem to recall there was a lot of problems and delays being caused by communication and other dysfunctions between MCDA and the other departments that it merged with to form CPED. Given the large number of projects we have going on now that haven't required TIF handouts, I'd say that was a pretty good move on his part, particularly since it meant keeping one of those campaign promises that his critics claim he forgot. > NRP has these principles (fill in the others, oh, ye with better > memories): 1. neighborhood decision making and implementation; 2. NRP > independence from the city's development agency (MCDA or CPED); 3. > freedom from strict adherence to centrally determined goals; 4. > notifying neighborhoods of planned development and notifying them early > enough so they could impact the decision; 5. continuing collaborative > processes so that decisions are not imposed on the citizens. And from what I have seen in my participation with my neighborhood organization, we still are able to make decisions at the neighborhood level, we're still free from strict adherence to centrally determined goals (whatever that means), we still get notified of planned development early enough to impact decisions and we get to take part in decision-making rather than have them imposed on us. So how exactly has Rybak undermined NRP again? > RT and council punished the city rather than insist that the legislature > continue to send money back to Minneapolis that we had already put in far > above what we take back out. Oh, please! Like all Rybak had to do was "insist" to the Legislature in 2002 that they not cut LGA and all would be well. Yeah, right. Those of us who actually pay attention to what goes on at the State Capitol are fully aware of just how much time and effort Mayor Rybak, along with a host of mayors from throughout Minnesota, spent arguing, begging and pleading for LGA to be kept at previous levels, to no avail. And if McLaughlin could have done better, then where the heck was he? Surely he could have deemed that a good use of his time and talents to protect his home city and his constituents from the actions of a short-sighted governor and State Legislature by lobbying to prevent LGA cuts. The simple fact of the matter is McLaughlin wouldn't have done any better and possibly would have fared worse, since in 2002, there were still plenty of suburban and rural legislators who would have associated him with the LRT line that they opposed, but were strong-armed into passing by former Governor Ventura. And if you haven't noticed, they're not shy about taking out their grudges on us city folk. >> The cuts in police staffing started long before Mayor Rybak's administration >> began. The 71 cops that Mayor Rybak has proposed to add will bring police >> staffing up to 40 more than when his administration began. Those are the >> facts, much as McLaughlin and his supporters would like to claim otherwise. >> > The spin you've put on this situation is remarkable. The cops who were > cut or positions left unfilled during the SSB administration were > absorbable, to a degree, because it was done very gradually so that the > PD had a chance to adjust. RT cut cops in one fell swoop because RT and > his supporters have no experience with the situation for the core city, > but do not want to support contending with the issues imposed on the > core city through red lining. You can spin this 'til the cows come home, > but the base reality is that the comfortable cannot see well enough to > support our city recovering from 40 and more years of both malicious and > blind neglect or solutions which only support a larger and larger social > services sector of misguided "fixers." It's not spin, Wizard. It's fact. Rybak's first term will end with more 40 officers on the streets than it started with. Another fact: Rybak's adminstration has held harmless or increased the police department's budget steadily during a period where he's had to manage fiscal crisis after fiscal crisis due to LGA cuts and other "gifts" from our Legislature, along with getting started on cleaning up the massive financial mess that the SSB administration left for him. Looking below, you'll see that in the first year of his administration, the police budget increased by $4 million over the last year of the SSB administration (2001). Then you'll notice that while nearly all the other city departments were getting slashed over the following couple of years, the police budget stayed virtually the same. Then when things started to get better, the police budget got another $3 million increase. 2001: $95,286,294 2002: $99,551,497 2003: $99,448,921 2004: $99,487,569 2005: $102,481,580 And the 2006 proposed budget has yet another increase slated for the police department, which will go up to $116 million. Again, those are the facts. So much for Mayor Rybak cutting cops "in one fell swoop" because he supposedly doesn't care about folks living in the core city. You can accuse me of spinning all you want because you don't like what I'm saying, but so far, I'm the only one actually providing facts to back up my arguments. Mark Snyder Windom Park REMINDERS: 1. 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