Re: [TCMetro] Comprehensive local planning

[RJBenke]

The downside of direct election of Metro Council members is the difficulty in conducting a worthwhile campaign across such a large district on a broad range of mostly arcane (to most voters) public policy issues. Add to that communication challenge the likelhood that big money interests would take over.

Regarding the merger of local units of government, it would make more sense from a citizen access perspective to merge the seven metro counties and do away with the Council. There are different levels of concentration that make sense for different services. There are thousands of examples of multi-jurisdictional service arrangements already in place. For example, safety service dispatching works better on a larger scale, patroling neighborhoods works better at a small scale. The City of Minneapolis and City of St. Paul offer example for citizen access: both have neighborhood organizations because the cities are too large and diverse to operate as a single unit for all matters.

Bob Benke
New Brighton