I had to get to a Medical appointment at the V.A. and never noticed it was not
posted until this early morning.
----- Forwarded Message ----- From: james graham <<email obscured>>To:
"<email obscured>" <<email obscured>>; Jan Nye <<email obscured>>;
james graham <<email obscured>>Cc:
"mpls@forums.e-democracy.org" <mpls@forums.e-democracy.org>Sent: Tuesday, March
12, 2019, 9:56:57 AM CDTSubject: Re: [Mpls] Snow Emergency
So I guess we now know that the City Council and Mayor have no problem wasting
scarce resources and our tax dollars on meaningless gestures. After sub par
plowing most of the winter in my community they allow the bureaucrats to waste
money on plowing streets rather than allowing Mother Nature to take care of the
problem. It does not matter that it will be in the forties for the next week
and there was almost no snow to plow yesterday. Late in the afternoon here
came a plow making a hell of a racket plowing pretty much bare pavement. Not
exactly a "Snow Emergency"
And we allow this group of twits to create the "2040 Plan" for the City of
Minneapolis??? Part of which is to replace single family homes with two and
three unit construction??? Did someone forget to tell the twits that
Minneapolis already allows "Accessory Units" and "Carriage Houses" in R-1
zoning? Last I heard 1+1 equals 2. Now you can argue with me but you can't
argue with mathematics.
But wait... R-4 allows more and the plan for ruling a variance on that rule of
"three" sure is easily changed and all of a sudden you have 6 and 8 and hey why
not 10 and a 2 1/2 story walk up?
Now I am a great advocate for accessory housing units and using those unused
parts of a large duplex for an extra unit or a backyard for a "Carriage House".
Remember folks I fought the City of Minneapolis for years before getting the
Ventura Village overlay to allow that about 10 years before Lisa Bender came
along with the idea. THAT is good planning. It is "Low Profile-Higher
Density" planning. Planning that adds to the quality of life and character of
a City.
Especially when communities are allowed to do their own rules for such
development to best fit that particular community and neighborhood. Like
Vancouver B.C. has done. Community Members really do know more about the needs
of their community and having a much greater interest and "Expertise" in their
community simply do far better "Planning" than supposed "professional planners"
acting on the wishes of their Mayor and Council Member bosses.
Yesterday and today's snow plowing and "Emergency" plowing of snow that was
going away all on its own certainly points out why one might have less than
complete confidence in that bodies ability to plan anything. Of course they
only carry forth a long tradition of that failure. Though the new Mayor and
Council and other elected officials were supposed to be more open to "Citizen
Participation" and "Empowerment". We really have not experienced that so far
though. We have a lot of rhetoric about it but little actual meaningful action
on that.
Meaningless gestures and wasting our scarce resources simply do not give us
confidence. Not trusting the people in the communities to plan for what they
need in their communities as much as Developers also does not give us
confidence that they really have the "Quality of Life" of the residents in
mind.
Planning to displace the very people who elected them really does not inspire
trust. Can't think of anything better or more compelling to make the case for
TWO YEAR terms for the Council and Mayor. Making them more "Responsive and
Responsible" to the People does seem like a better idea.
Jim Graham, (someone who can add 1 plus 1 and have them equal 2; which seems
rare in some elected officials of Minneapolis. Carol Becker is an exception