Let me try to answer this since I'm a CIB committee member. Mayor Randy Kelly's power to appoint is no different than any other executive office holder. He has the ability to appoint all cronies or not. I can speak from my CIB perspective and clearly state he did not. We have a diverse group of members from across the city(determined by a formula on population). White, black, asian, latino and American Indian are serving on the committee of 18. That's more diversity that the leadership of the city DFL Party(racial and regional).
Like most citizen advisory groups, the executive picks, the legislative confirms. The governor has many commission appointments(somewhere over 200), as does the county (which has no executive so the legislative is the final call). Minneapolis is the same the way as I use to serve on two commissions when I lived there. Duluth has its commissions and so forth. The President of the United States has about 600 commission appointments. Point is, all executive office holders have the ability to appoint regular citizens to commissions. They can put all cronies there, which would be obvious to the watchdog groups, or they can mix it up, which is politically smarter for several reasons. The Mayor picks the 18 permanant members. These names are submitted through an open process. That's the group that Caty is talking about. There is also six members chosen from each of the 17 district council in January/February of the odd years to review project proposals on special task forces. The 18 members also sit on task force or two. Proposals are submitted in January of the odd year and the months of March and April are used for review by the entire committee. The excerpt below if from the CIB site explaining it in more detail: In January of each odd calendar year, citizen organizations and City departments prepare proposals for capital projects that encompass a wide range of public improvements. Typical proposals have requested improvements in streets, sewers, bridges, libraries, recreation centers, playground equipment, traffic flow and other public facilities and infrastructure. All improvements must have a useful life of at least 10 years. Organizations may submit proposals individually, in conjunction with other neighborhood groups or jointly with City departments. The deadline for submitting proposals for the CIB Process is generally in early February. Once all project proposals are received, City department staff prepare cost estimates and identify available financing for each project. Staff also provide initial ratings of proposals based on City Council-approved project criteria developed bi-annually by the Planning Commission and the CIB Committee. In April, special task forces comprised of representatives from each of the 17 citizen participation districts begin to review the project proposals. Projects are grouped by type, then reviewed and rated by one of the three task forces: "Community Facilities", "Streets and Utilities" and "Residential and Economic Development." When project review is completed in late May, the task forces forward their project recommendations to the Long-Range Capital Improvement Budget (CIB) Committee that match the top-ranked proposals with available financing. By late June, the CIB Committee forwards to the Mayor recommended capital improvement budgets for the following two fiscal years. The Mayor holds a public hearing in July and presents his proposed capital (and operating) budgets to the City Council and citizens in mid-August. Eric Mitchell Payne Phalen --- caty <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Excuse my rather direct response but...... Mr. > Spaulding you must hale > from the truly privileged insiders to call the CIB > process fair and > OPEN. The committee members are hand picked by the > Mayor. That would > pretty much eliminate the chances that it is either > a fair or open > process. It may be competitive at best or worst > whatever the case may be!!! > caty, selby by way of south minneapolis > __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com ------------------------------------------------- JOIN the St. Paul Issues Forum TODAY: http://www.e-democracy.org/stpaul/ ------------------------------------------------- POST MESSAGES HERE: [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/
