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I certainly agree with you. The discussion
regarding making the Met Council an elected body presupposes that they are
providing a necessary and unique service, and that their scope of activities is
appropriate. I would much rather see a discussion that debates their merits and
their mission given the role they have played in LRT for example. Is
your commute better than it was 10 years ago? Mine isn't and I don't foresee LRT
doing anything to improve over the next 20 years.
Tom Searles
Waconia Twp.
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 9:41
AM
Subject: Re: [TCMetro] Comprehensive
local planning
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
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