St. Paul Topics - This Week: Light Rail http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul-topics -----------------------------------------
Holy crap! Eric and I actually agree on something. "I think that centrism is first and foremost about a government that is customer oriented." At one extreme you have the notion that the government that governs best, governs least. At the other extreme, you have a bureacracy that believes that it's the role of the city to provide them with a job, health benefits and a generous retirement because they have a right to it. In the utopian middle somewhere is a population that benefits from services that are most efficiently delivered by government, like street plowing, police, fire .... (uh, I can't think of any others right now) and city employees who recognize that they've been hired to do those things in return for a paycheck and are committed to their service and happy to provide it for their fellow citizens. If city government were really run like a customer-oriented business, you wouldn't hear complaints from the taxpayers and have political campaigns promising to keep taxes low because people would feel they're getting their money's worth. But also, you would have only those services that the citizens agreed that they wanted or needed. In other words, if I was mayor, I would do a city-wide audit of all government departments. If that department provides no direct service to the public, I would eliminate it. I guess I can forget about running as the DFL endorsed candidate, huh? Dennis Tester Mac-Groveland _____________________________________________ To Join: St. Paul Issues Forum Rules Discussion Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _____________________________________________ NEW ADDRESS FOR LIST: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, modify subscription, or get your password - visit: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/listinfo/stpaul Archive Address: http://www.mnforum.org/mailman/private/stpaul/
