David,
You make some legitimate points about the Park Board issue, but please do so
without distorting my comments.
David wrote:
>
> I also believe it's
> similarly shallow to label anyone who questions park-city spending
> inefficiencies as "anti-environmental."
That is true, but my labelling of Carol Becker as "anti-environmental" [and
pro-corporate machine politics] was NOT based on her questioning of
park-city spending. The labels were based on Ms. Becker's earlier posting
which advocated ELIMINATING the Park Board, and tranferring its
responsibilities to the often anti-environmental and almost invariably
corporate-controlled city council. I believe it is fair to label such a
position as anti-environmental, anti-livability, and anti-people.
>
> I oppose corporate welfare. But I certainly oppose wasteful spending in
> other public functions as well. Yes, there is potential hypocrisy from
those
> who support excessive construction subsidies yet eagle-eye the park board
> budget; however, there is similar hypocrisy from those who criticize
> corporate welfare yet mau-mau critics of structural inefficiencies.
The point is that Ms. Becker has failed to establish that there is any
SIGNIFICANT waste in spending on parks. Ms. Becker pointed out a couple of
examples of duplicative efforts without providing any information to show
that there was a significant extra cost, compared the total amount of money
that Minneapolis spends on its parks per capita to other cities, and seems
to imply that this information is sufficient to support the elimination of
the Park Board. It is fair to criticize such weak analysis, and suggest
that it is being used to advance a negative agenda. Since Ms. Becker's
original position was to transfer the Park Board's responsibilities to the
City Council, it is also fair to point out how the City Council wastes a lot
more money on far less justified purposes in order to show that this
proposal is a bad idea.
>
> I think most of us want a high-cost, high-accountability park system. We
> should reject the "environmental correctness" that any critic of park
> spending is a local James Watt, while at the same time rejecting the phony
> argument that high spending is bad.
As explained above, the "James Watt" label [David's words not mine] would
not be justified by questioning the Park Board's spending, but could apply
to someone who proposes transferring oversight of the park from a government
body specifically concerned with parks to a city council that it eager give
away as much as possible to big developers.
Jordan Kushner
Powderhorn, Ward 8
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