Mr. Atherton said:
In my neighborhood the NRP invested close to 50% of $3,000,000 in a school and community center that the School Board wanted to sell and $600,000 of it did go to Brighton.
What Mr. Atherton, somehow, fails to mention is that while the School Board did TRY to close Pratt School, it remains open and the investment in it of $1,500,000 in neighborhood NRP funds (and an untold amount of sweat by most of the neighborhood's members) remains secure.
And what he also fails, somehow to mention is that the investment that went to Brighton resulted in the removal of a derelict light-industrial building and several collapsing houses and their replacement with a modern and successful town-home development and the award-winning restoration of an historic neighborhood house. And, as long as I'm defending the neighborhood, I'll also defend Brighton. Any neighborhood that finds Brighton interested in developing in their neighborhood can count themselves as very fortunate. I worked with Brighton and found them easy to work personally with an interested in working with our neighborhood. There willingness to work with us is testified to by the same development that Mr. Atherton impliedly bad-mouths in his post. Brighton had completed the plans for the development of the property when the opportunity presented itself to move a house to one of the lots and restoring it. Brighton could have easily, and correctly, have said, "Our plans are complete, sorry." Instead, they invested personal time to change their plans to allow the house to be moved and restored. Just as Mr. Atherton is not correct in his regular disparagement of the people who live in his own neighborhood, he is also not correct in his disparagement of Brighton Development.
Mr. Atherton also said:
The problem is that we have no way of knowing how much of
this money was squandered and how much of it ended up back
in the hands of people making decisions, because there are
no real checks and balances for NRP processes.
I really, really, resent this. The imputation of people making personal self-dealing profits out of the NRP program is just outrageous! PPERRIA's books are open as are NRP's records. And all years that we expended NRP money were audited by Minnesota's state auditor. And all those audits are available for public inspection. (It needs to be noted that for some of the years in question that Mr. Atherton was on the PPERRIA Board of Directors. And, for those years the State Auditor mailed him his own personal copies of the audits. (This was not a personal favor to Mr. Atherton. It's SOP for the Auditor to mail copies of audits to the Board of Directors. That's because it's any Board's duty to clean things up if problems are found.) You can be sure that had anything untoward been found by the State Auditor, that Mr. Atherton would be the first to be waiving the audits like a bloody flag. It also needs to be pointed out that in the past few weeks that Mr. Atherton requested copies of all audits and they were made available to him -- including the years prior to when he was on PPERRIA's Board. Again, had the audits even hinted at there being anything wrong -- including the self-dealing that Mr. Atherton accuses us of -- that you would have heard about it in his most recent postings.)
There are other, lesser, problems with what Mr. Atherton has to say. However, I'm sure that the tone of all of his prior posts provide adequate reason to disregard everything he has to say.
Steve Cross
Prospect Park (Who happened to be the PPERRIA president for a couple of the years and went through the audits by the State Aduditor.)
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