just a question I want to toss out for people's brains to work over. it relates to the some of the things talked about vis a vis the library referendum but has wider implications for city governance, property taxes etc. As i write there is a presentation being made to the ways and means/budget committee by the GmCVA, that's greater mpls convention and visitors assn for those of you unfamiliar with the acronym. I wanted to hear the presentation but frankly i hate these sorts of things. anyway, i looked inside the committee room door, thinking i would venture in, and saw a stack of box lunches. now the meeting is being held over the lunch hour rather than at its customary time of 9am. i'm not quite sure but i suspect that GMCVA wanted to provide a free lunch in a convivial setting, that is as convivial as city hall can ever be. see how cynicism, bred by a steady stream of public relations, has made me. this past friday, i attended a meeting of the near northside development implementation committee. well over ten minutes of the meeting time was taken up watching a video compilation of tv news report of the recent groundbreaking ceremony. now these were all people i presume were on the guest list and attended the ceremony to watch jackie c. and ssb turn over shovelfuls of dirt. my time and theirs i'm sure could have been spent in better ways than reading their reviews. then dawn hagen from mcda passesd out a piece of full color fluff and chuck lutz of mcda passed out the final full color implementation plan. I wondered how many plans had preceded it. now the plan, like others, is necessary as a working document but as most of us have come to understand they are oftentimes more articles of fiction than fact. one document is no big thing; multiply it by what seems an infinite number, looking at the stacks in the city hall municipal library, and it becomes quite another thing. then factor in color versus black and white copier costs... well you can see where i'm going with this. We should study issues. we should turn them over and over and imagine consequences, weigh costs, look before we leap. all that is valid expenditure. but then after we have made decisions do we then need color brochures? i don't know the answers to all these questions. I see the efficacy in promotion but so much of what I see is smoke and mirrors meant to draw attention away from the reality of the situation which is often that what has been arrived at is not what it is purported to be and little more than justification and rationalization. Steve Cramer was quoted in the Strib within the last several months as saying "you can hardly expect us to know where every dollar goes in these large projects." That may not be an exact quote but it's damn close, within a penny or two, certainly not even a dime's difference. I can tell him where some of the dollars went. They were handing it out at the meeting I attended. If it were only a penny, a dollar that would be one thing. that is only the proverbial tip of the iceberg. let's talk about $18 million to connect the near northside with Kenwood Parkway. It would be nice to have but when we lack for so many other things in the city we can do without it til a much later date. I apolgize for the disjointed nature of this ramble. It's how my mind works. Oh! the question! do you think there is a lot of needless fluff generated by city hall aside from the obvious campaign posturing? Tim Connolly Ward 7 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Messenger - Talk while you surf! It's FREE. http://im.yahoo.com/
