The biggest scam in Minnesota politics?  The intertwined three-card-monte game the DFL plays with state Local Government Aid (LGA), county and city taxes, and city budgets.

LGA, for those who weren’t paying attention, was instituted in the sixties and seventies to transfer wealth around Minnesota.  Back then, it ensured outstate towns and school districts got enough money from the economically-thriving Twin Cities to support more spending.  Today, it allows the metro governments – Minneapolis and Saint Paul – to launder their spending through the state, and get the parts of the state that are able to pay their own way to subsidize it.

It’s a very handy political tool.  It allows city governments to spend like crack whores with stolen gold cards, of course, and hide the spending under a mountain of state money.  And for the savvy mayor, paying for essential services with LGA while paying for things like Human Rights offices and $50,000 water fountains gives one incredible political leverage; using the money the city actually controls to pay off special-interest constituencies (neighborhood coalitions, toney arts organizations, unions) with the sure thing money, and using the state money – which is out of the mayors’ control to some extent – as a bludgeon to keep the peasants voters in line.

I noted this during the last budget cycle in Saint Paul, when Mayor Coleman’s annual trifecta of announcements  – “taxes are rising”, “we’re laying off firemen” and “damn you, Tim Pawlenty” – have become a tradition as revered as the Winter Carnival.

Walter Scott Hudson – at True North and at his blog, Fightin’ Words – isn’t fooled, either:

Employees of the City of Minneapolis were advised Tuesday of the “extremely damaging” effect Governor Tim Pawlenty’s proposal to solve a $1.2-billion budget deficit could have on “core services.” Pawlenty’s plan would “take another $29 million out of Minneapolis’ 2010 budget,” an e-mail from Mayor R.T. Rybak and City Council President Barbara Johnson stated. On top of $21 million in previous aid cuts, the governor’s proposal would “represent a 56% cut in the Local Government Aid that Minneapolis was supposed to receive from the State in 2010.”

The text of the e-mail seems intent to incite the passions of city employees, and direct those passions toward St. Paul. This came as members of the public employee union AFSCME, a member organization of the AFL-CIO, gathered at the capitol to rally for a budget which “promotes job growth and preserves funds for local governments and state welfare programs.” Pressure is on state legislators to reject the governor’s proposal and keep cities and counties on the dole.

Read the whole thing.

It’s just as conservatives have always said; once our cities get dependent on welfare for more than a generation or two, it’s very hard to get off it.

But with the national economy continuing its Obama swan dive and the state and national moods swinging strongly againt NeoCarterism, I have a hunch the Twin Mayors are in for a rude awakening.  If not this session, then soon.

You might have heard the radio ads:  the Minneapolis Police Federation has taken out commercials pointing out Minneapolis mayor and DFL gubernatorial candidate R.T. Rybak’s record on crime.

Not so, says Rybak (via MPR-via-MDE):

I have focused like a laser [Note:  I think I’ve found a closet Michael Medved listener! – Ed.] on making Minneapolis a safe place to call home, and we’ve had some great success: in the last three years, we’ve cut violent crime by 39%, violent crime by juveniles is down 47% and murders are at the lowest level in decades. The work of Chief Tim Dolan and officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, combined with that of neighbors across our city, have made Minneapolis safer by almost every measure. These facts are indisputable.

Unfortunately, the Federation’s ad is about politics, not policing.

[Note to Mayor Rybak:  Next time you or some other gun controlbot wants flog another national police chiefs’ association’s endorsement of gun control, I’ll be there to remind you you just said that.  But I digress]

I’ve made a practice of focusing on getting results for the people of Minneapolis and not focusing on predictably misleading ads from the Police Federation. That’s not going to change.

Luke Hellier at MDE notes that while crime has dropped from a very dismal peak three years ago – when Minneapolis was flirting with re-achieving its “Murderapolis” label from the nineties – it still hasn’t dropped to the same level as when he was elected:

Rybak’s First Year As Mayor 2002:

Murder – 31

Rape – 254

Assault – 1184

Most Recent Full Year 2008:

Murder – 39

Rape – 327

Assault – 1977

As with Luke, I’ll direction you to check out the facts yourselves.

Yesterday was the first day for the “Northstar” commuter rail service.

Now, commuter rail is one of those areas where I break with some of my conservative friends – with a big, red asterisk.  Unlike Light Rail, which is a pretty universal money pit, Commuter Rail – heavy cars using existing right of way and rails – is relatively inexpensive.  The forty mile Northstar cost less than half of what the seven mile Ventura Trolley did, and is currently coming around a quarter of the ludicrous, city-destroying Central Corridor’s price tag at the moment.  Had the Met Council opted to buy used rolling stock (cars and locomotives) and build its stations on the cheap, and had gas prices remained high and pumped up the ridership, the Northstar could have hypothetically been revenue-neutral and self-supporting in relatively short order.  Which, for a government program, ain’t chicken feed…

…provided you get all those “ifs” out of the way.  The Met bought new rolling stock (enh) and as always used the stations as an excuse to subsidize local artists, and the price came in a good third higher than it might have.

Still, for those who are trying for whatever reason to recalibrate their lives around the shiny new toy, madness awaits:

Trains were on time — the first one arrived three minutes early — but the first day was not entirely free of glitches. At Target Field, the doors of the 7:10 a.m. train didn’t open for a few minutes, so its more than 300 passengers were stuck inside. Once they made their way upstairs to the Hiawatha station, light rail wasn’t there to greet them because of a mechanical problem. A replacement Hiawatha train left the station at 7:25.

During the afternoon rush, there were some frantic dashes for closing doors, some doorway stumbles and even a few people who missed trains and had to wait for the next one. Only one person missed the final train, arriving at Target Field two minutes late on a connecting light-rail transit train.

Metro Transit has a way of letting you down; I can’t count the number of times, back when I did a lot more transit, that buses would run late or sometimes not at all, or schedules would be inaccurate, or bus stops would be incorrectly marked; for that matter, in one year I had two buses break down on me in mid-trip.  Carrying a bike with you in one of the bike racks, I came to realize, is a bit like having a lifeboat on a ship.

Susan Sullivan of Andover hopes not. “When I got to the Government Center, it was 10 minutes later than my bus ever got me there,” she wrote in an e-mail. “And I will be paying $2 more each day for the ‘privilege’ of riding this.”

And then there are those for whom ideology swerves into irrationality:

The sole outbound morning train to Big Lake had 44 customers when it headed northwest at 6:05 a.m. Kate Pound of St. Paul, was one of them and had one of the more complicated commutes. She rode her bicycle to a bus stop, transferred from the bus to a light-rail train and then to Northstar at Target Field. She departed the Big Lake station via a Northstar Link bus to her job as a geology teacher at St. Cloud State University.

“It’s great, it’s cheaper, I’m doing the right thing in terms of my carbon footprint,” she said. “But what if I’m late and miss my connection in Big Lake? As long as I don’t get stuck, this is the way to go.”

Well, no, Ms. Pound – moving to Saint Cloud would be the “right thing in terms of your carbon footprint”.  What you’re doing is salving your precious environmentalist ego, while continuing to live the high-density urban life you no doubt came to love while attending Macalester.  If I were to guess, anyway.

Anyway – if you’re taking the train, enjoy.  It’s a less-dumb option than the Ventura Trolley, and vastly less criminally stupid than the Central Corridor is going to be.

Speaking of Instant Runoff Voting…

Who is it who actually “ranks” their choices, anyway?  Maybe my point of view is skewed because I am a guy who has – and my social circle is a lot of politically-aware people who also have – strong opinions who know who they’re voting for and why, but I can’t remember a single election where I had a second choice for any office.

I went back through the last several key, contested elections, and entered “ranked choices” for each race.

Saint Paul Mayoral Election, 2009
First Choice: Eva Ng
Second Choice: My dog, Clu.
Third Choice:  A jab in the eye with a sharp stick.

Minnesota US Senate Race, 2008
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: My cat, Nosemarie.
Third Choice: Getting ripped apart by mice.

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2008
First Choice: Ed Matthews
Second Choice: Being forced to sit in booth at Denny’s listening to Ken Weiner, Bill Pendergast and Eva Young frothing about Michele Bachmann for all eternity..
Third Choice: A “Spongebob Squarepants” marathon.

Minnesota Gubernatorial Race, 2006
First Choice: Tim Pawlenty
Second Choice: My other cat, Candy.
Third Choice: Gouging out my own eyes with a spork.  (This was almost a tie for third, by the way; Candy has this habit of biting my nose at 4AM that has her on my schvitz list today).

Minnesota Fourth District Congressional Race, 2006
First Choice: Obi Sium
Second Choice: Drinking a fifth of my own fermented sweat .
Third Choice: Going to “Drinking Liberally” and drinking heavily.
Fourth Choice: Gargling with Drano
Fifth Choice:  Going to “Drinking Liberally” and not being allowed to drink at all.
Sixth Choice:  Any cast member from “The Hills”.
Seventh Choice: Betty McCollum.

US Presidential Race, 2004
First Choice: George W. Bush
Second Choice: Brussels Sprouts
Third Choice: Any random western European leader...

US Senate Race, 2002
First Choice: Norm Coleman
Second Choice: One of those gas-station burritos, after it’s been sitting on my car seat on a hot day.
Third Choice: Rick Kahn’s speech, on eternal loop, forever.

US Presidential Race, 2000
First Choice: Steve Forbes
Second Choice: Jack Kemp.
Third Choice: Steve Forbes.

Now, like most people, I do believe most people are like me.  Or, rather, that most people who should be allowed to vote are like me.

Oh, that sounded so intolerant; what I mean is that I suspect most people who actually care enough about politics to care about their voting system at all, really don’t go into the polling place with any sort of “second choice” in mind.  We go into the polls wanting victory for the candidate who represents our beliefs the closest, and not a lot more.

Who actually has some notion of “ranking” choices in elections?  I’m curious.

One of the biggest defeats in Saint Paul Tuesday night was the passage of Instant Runoff Voting.

“IRV” will bring endless resolutions, opaque unaccountable recounts, and – in the worst cases – elections where “Majorities” can only be reached by tossing ballots who don’t vote for any of the “finalists” in the byzantine counting processes – meaning winners will get “majorities” of ballots with preferences, but minorities of actual votes cast.

On the upside, “victory” parties will go on forever; Minneapolis likely won’t see official results from its various races until Christmas.

Christmas.

Jeff Rosenberg at MNPublius tries to explain last night’s Minneapolis election results.  And I do mean “tries”.  Jeff is a capable enough writer, and explains statistics as well as anyone in the Twin Cities’ ‘sphere.  (They’re often as not wrong and out of context, but they’re explained well!).

To wit:

There were no major surprises, and few chances to really see ranked-choice voting come into play in Minneapolis last night. Joe Bodell has the complete results at MN Progressive Project [Sometimes called “Minnesota “Tragedy of Spyrochaetal Paresis” “Progressive” Project”]. There were a few races were 2nd-choice votes will be needed to officially put one candidate over 50 percent, but in all but one case the results are clear, with the leading candidate receiving 47 or 48 percent of the 1st-choice vote and the nearest challenger with under 40 percent. These races would all take miracles for the 2nd-place finisher on the 1st-choice votes to come from behind.

Which is a good thing, because recounts will be just plain hell.

There were two cases, though, where we’ll see ranked choice voting (i.e. Instant Runoff Voting) come into play, both involving the Park Board. In District 5, Carol Kummer and Jason Stone are nail-bitingly close. This one will be determined by 2nd-choice votes — in fact, it may even need to be decided by the 3rd-choice votes of those whose first choices were Barland and Looney.

Because Minneapolis voting machines could not be calibrated to tabulate anything other than the 1st-choice votes, the ballots will all need to be tabulated by hand, which means it will be some time before we know the winner of the Park Board race.

Is this reminding anyone of rotisserie league baseball yet?

I mean, that seems to be IRV’s main feature; it gives wonks stuff to chatter about.  Forever.

Congrats, Saint Paul.  You turned your electoral system into a friggin’ wonk’s parlor game.

Home.

It’s one of the most powerful words in the English language.

And it’s one of the most powerful feelings there is – as an observer or as a participant.

The soldier returns home.  The young runaway comes back to home and family.  The prodigal son walks back up the sidewalk.

But…er…this?

With bright white lights, a hushed atmosphere and chunks of steel twisted into impossible shapes, it feels more like a museum than a garage.

A hometown National Guard unit, back from Afghanistan, meets its family at the armory?

An unjustly-imprisoned man is released to his family in the garage of the courthouse?

But it is the new home for crucial remnants of the old Interstate 35W bridge.

Oh.

I mean, looking for a local angle is part and parcel of what the news business does.  I know that.  But wreckage?

The piece in the Strib is called “Remnants of 35W Bridge Come Home” or some such.

The story is actually interesting, if you have any interest in engineering, the law, forensic sciences and the like:

The bridge’s many pieces are all in Minnesota again — now that the National Transportation Safety Board has returned the parts it needed for its investigation. The bridge parts arrived from the East Coast over the weekend and are being housed in a 5,000-square-foot warehouse in Oakdale built especially for that purpose. There the parts will be protected from wind and water so that lawyers and engineers can examine them for the many lawsuits related to the bridge’s collapse.

All well and good – and useful news.

But is it just me, or is that just about the longest stretch to imbue sentiment into a story that we’ve ever seen?

As Minneapolis’ confronts the idea that its city-driven “improvements” have been either squibs (Gaviidae Common, Town Square) or catastrophic failures (Block E), it’s good – and, for some Minneapolis city councilpeople, counterintuitive – to note that free enterprise is still alive.

Holy Land, a long-time destination for people who like great mediterranean food and groceries, is booming along a tatty stretch of Central Avenue in Northeast Minneapolis:

Holy Land Brand Inc. CEO Majdi Wadi furthered the commercial renaissance of Minneapolis’ Central Avenue corridor and the Minnesota manufacturing economy last week when he opened the state’s first hummus factory, a sparkling-new facility that produces 60,000 eight-ounce containers a month in what had been a crummy bar on 25th Avenue NE.

“We paid $1.25 million for the old Sully’s Bar [in 2007], which was appraised at $950,000 by the bank,” said Wadi. “We were shocked by the drugs and prostitution. But now, Holy Land has another business that is good for our neighborhood and city.

Sorry to hear that Sully’s – which used to make a grrrreat burger – fell on hard times.  But then, the whole neighborhood had been sliding, even when I lived there.  Good to hear that opportunity still knocks. 

Of course, when someone starts a business in Minneapolis, there’s a good chance a fiscal conservative gets his wings:

“Hennepin County rewards me by raising the property taxes. That’s OK. Wells Fargo loaned me some money, and we’re going to make a good business.”

Anyway – someone tell Michael Moore that capitalism seems to be doing pretty well by the Wadis:

A few blocks away, Holy Land, which now employs 140 people in its store, deli, restaurant and other businesses, expanded its bakery in refurbished quarters that was another derelict building at 1617 Central Av. NE.

“The revitalization of Central Avenue is immigrant-based,” said Paul Ostrow, the longtime City Council member from northeast Minneapolis. “Majdi has blazed the trail since he started making these investments more than a decade ago. He’s global with his imports and exports. He’s a success. And he also cares about Northeast.”

In an interview in his cramped, nondescript office last month, Wadi, 44, a Palestinian immigrant, repeatedly expressed thanks to neighbors and America.

Maybe we should thank him.

Yes!  Thank you, Mr. Wadi!

Note to the city of Minneapolis: don’t thank Mr. Wadi the way Saint Paul and the Met Council is “thanking” all the asian immigrants who’ve done similar work along University Avenue – by building a rail line that runs ’em all out of business.

Minneapolis is getting rid of some of its maze of one-way streets in downtown – most notably Hennepin and First Avenues.

The change is intended on one level to help make Minneapolis’ downtown streets more pedestrian-friendly, and on another to make the streets less-resemble spillways to allow commuters to escape the failed downtown area quickly at the end of the work day.

A story in the Strib focuses on the affect the change is having on downtown’s iconic  First Avenue nightclub. The problem, according to the cluster of management and staff interviewed by Strib music critic Chris Riemenschneider, is that the change (adding bike and parking lanes on the new northbound lane on First Avenue) obliterates the bar’s load-in area, requiring bands to haul their gear a block to get in the door.

The whole story – in part inasmuch as it is actual reporting, rather than “music criticism” – is very much worth a read.

But for me, the payoff came near the end, in conversation with Warehouse District city councilwoman Lisa Goodman, whose answer to the plan’s critics is the classic urban politician’s retort; “Why should we let actual unintended consequences alter the Master Plan?”

Well, not quite in those exact words:

Goodman was not sympathetic to the club, though. She accused First Ave’s staff of solely looking out for its best interests. She also said its soon-to-be-obsolete load-in area — hooded meter spaces that have been in use as long as anybody at the club can remember, and for which the club pays about $120 per night — is not even a legal loading zone.”Why should they get any preferential treatment?” Goodman asked.

Oh, I dunno, Lisa Goodman.  Perhaps because in the 39 years the club has existed in that space, the City of Minneapolis in its infinite wisdom has inflicted countless miseries upon that part of downtown – City Center, the Conservatory, Block E, the Target Center, the forced condemnation of an entire block of nearby downtown real estate to make way for a corporate HQ for a company that is quietly building a “real” headquarters  out in Brooklyn Park, light rail – and yet First Avenue has improbably managed to survive, a tiny, improbable island of the free market in a sea of failed government meddling?

Because they’ve earned a little “preferential treatment” or, as we call it in the real world, “a concession from the Master Plan”, due to having survived the infinite wisdom of Lisa Goodman and the rest of the gabbling hamsters that run Minneapolis for all these years?

An observation that eludes many people, especially in these hopey-changey times when the less-“gifted” are seeking a savior from Washington and Michael Moore stalks the land; government is a machine that is designed to waste; waste money, waste resources, waste lives, waste initiative – waste.
R. Steven Rogers – a Minneapolis guy  – observes Minneapolis govenment doing what all govenment does best: on the one hand, demanding more…:

Last year, they sold us the $60 Million per year referendum to increase funding for the Minneapolis Public Schools, assuring us that it would help do things like buy needed books, supplies, and manage class sizes.

…and on the other?  Profligate waste:

Then they closed 4 more schools. That makes for 10 since April of 2007. And at the Folwell School, they are throwing away an entire school, one dumpster at a time. Perfectly good books, tables, sewing machines, sporting equipment, you name it. All of this could be donated to charities, other schools, youth groups; the list of people in need is quite long, especially these days.

Hey – it was all paid for!

By us.

Read the whole infuriating thing.

There’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The good news?  Outrage from Twin Cities’ bar owners over a ham-fisted backdoor tax hike (which we covered last March) got results; the Met Council has cut the regional sewer fee for patio seating:

Twin Cities bar and restaurant owners got a break Wednesday from the Metropolitan Council on fees charged for outdoor patio seating that help pay for the regional sewer system. One pub owner already is planning to add a patio next summer.

The Metropolitan Council approved a 75 percent discount on the fees effective Oct. 1. Restaurateurs had argued that the regional sewer-system fees they pay for outdoor dining seats, on top of what they pay for indoor seating, are excessive.

The Council was charging the same fees for outdoor patio seats – which are really useful from June through August, or April through October for people like me – as they were for indoor, year-round seating.  It made patio seating unaffordable for many restauranteurs and pub owners, like our friend Terry Keegan at Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis who, unsurprisingly given the outspoken sort he is, turns up in the story.

And therein lies the “bad” news, of sorts:

Keegan’s Irish Pub in Minneapolis shut down its outdoor patio last year after city inspectors said the bar needed to pay $7,200 in regional sewer fees. Keegan’s plans to reopen the patio next year. “We wouldn’t do it at all if they didn’t bring the charge down,” owner Terry Keegan said. “We simply couldn’t afford it.”

So the patio will not, in fact, be open for Saturday’s fifth anniversary MOB gala.  But what the heck; the sidewalk’ll be nice. 

And we have a victory to celebrate now! 

Given how few and far between victories are for small businessmen, property owners and the little guy in places like the Twin Cities this past few years, it’s worth tipping a pint or two.

The San Francisco Bay Bridge is closed while engineers fix a cracked “eyebar” – a structural member that transfers weight to the main supports.

Here’s hopeing they do a good job of it.

Or at least, let’s hope they do a better job than the reporters who are writing about it.  Because since the 35W River Bridge collapsed, it seems everyone is a structural engineer.

Eyebars are known to suffer from fatigue cracks.

The same design was used in the Interstate 35 bridge in Minneapolis, which collapsed in 2007 and killed five people.

Well, maybe in the same sense that both bridges had roads running over them.  The 35W bridge was a conventional arch-truss bridge with, to the best of my knowledge, no eyebars; the Bay Bridge is a combination of trusses and a suspension bridge.  Completely different structures.

But other than that…

And while normally I’d point out that the collapse killed thirteen people, I’m assuming the other eight disappeared due to California’s taxing and spending.

Minneapolis police investigate Minneapolis police softball team for a violent drunken binge:

The Minneapolis Police Department’s internal affairs unit is investigating a police softball team after an alleged night of drinking and brawls.

The softball game itself was in Northeast Park last Tuesday, where Minneapolis police took on Minneapolis firefighters.

By the time the off-duty Minneapolis officers arrived at the Double Deuce strip club, still in their softball uniforms, the owner told FOX 9, the cops were so intoxicated that the bouncer wouldn’t let them in the strip club.

OK, so that’s one thing. 

But this…:

The owner says the officers even started flashing their badges, trying to intimidate the bouncer. And in retaliation, one of the officers allegedly urinated on the club’s wall. The incident was caught on video.

With closing time nearing, the team went to Mayslak’s Bar a few blocks away. The owner and staff told FOX 9, the officers picked a couple of fights and told patrons no one could stop them because they were all cops.

Outside the bar, one of the cops allegedly assaulted a man, who was passing by, after he tried to break up one of those fights.

The Minneapolis Police Department’s internal affairs unit has been making the rounds at the northeast bars, looking for witnesses, trying to get the story straight.

The audio on the Fox9 report said that people are reticent about talking; they don’t want to get on the wrong side of the police.

Back during my long-dead, unlamented career as a rock-and-roller, there were a slew of bars that everyone played.

Your band played innumerable gigs at the Seventh Street Entry for $20 and ten spots on the guest list and two drink tickets apiece to keep the hope of someday playing the stage at the First Avenue main room, opening for some kind of national act or another, alive.  You knew that not only had the Replacements and Hüsker Dü and teh Suicide Commandos played on that very stage, but that the sticky residue on the “dressing room” benches had probably started as Tommy Stinson’s vomit, years before.

The Cabooze?  You played there, if you could, because it was a little taste of the good life; a huge stage, a clean dressing room (that always started out the evening stocked with a cooler full of beer for the bands), a sound system that not only worked but made you sound like a rock star – the Cabooze kept the dream alive.

Mr B’s?  Fernandos?  MacReady’s?  The Union?  You played there to play.  Usually to a bar full of four or five career alcoholics who would have polished their bar stools to anything from Sonic Youth to Lawrence Welk in the background.

But the Uptown?  You played there – and hung out there – to see and be seen.  The Uptown was where The Scene was.  It was also the only live music joint in the city (other than the bars that booked only cover bands, like the Iron Horse or the Burnsville Bowl, which we just didn’t do) that the girls would ever go to on their own; Wednesday was “Ladies Night”, with $.50 drinks for the girls, which drew, mirabile dictu, guys, to hit on the girls and, failing that (and didn’t we all fail at that?), cadge cheap drinks off them.  I plead guilty and the Fifth.

Getting booked was a sisyphean ordeal; booking agent Maggie MacPherson (known to at least a few of my frustrated, band-leading friends as “the Maggot”) was brusque, curt, uncompromising, and impossible to reach, ever.  Fortunately for me, her boyfriend was a huge Don Vogel fan; it was worth a couple fairly choice bookings for my bands, back in the day.

The stage was as narrow and shallow as the hipsters that clogged the place. “Loading In” involved hoisting your gear through the back door directly to the stage – a miserable slog in mid-winter, which was inevitably when I played there. The sound system had a perpetual short-circuit that made everyone sound tinny and crackly.  The bartenders were arrogant and played peevish favorites with all the grace of Nick Coleman reciting Percy Shelley.  And it – at the corner of Hennepin and Lake, the epicenter of the “Uptown” neighborhood, the core of the Minneapolis hipster universe – was where everyone went (when they weren’t shooting pool at the CC or doing three-for-ones at Lyle’s).

And, as it has long been for most of the hipsters and musical C-list local heroes that used to run their lives around Maggie’s whims and the bands on the schedule, it looks like the party’s over:

Hopes of saving the Uptown Bar & Cafe at its present location dimmed Monday as the Minneapolis Planning Commission unanimously approved a development plan to level the long-beloved rock club and brunch spot in favor of a new, three-story retail space.

The developer behind the project, Jeffrey Herman, said a plan is in place to relocate the bar and keep its legacy as a music venue alive.

You can never go back, of course.  And Uptown – the neighborhood, not the bar – certainly hasn’t.  Just as the hipsters and wannabees grew up and got married and got day jobs that became careers and had kids and moved to Plymouth, the old hipster haunts have been gobbled up by soulless commerce; chain stores and theme eateries have replaced head shops and holes-in-the-wall; the same hipsters that used to sneak booze into the Uptown Theatre for the midnight showings of “Stop Making Sense” (I have no idea who I’m talking about here) now go to screenings at – I kid you not – an art-film multiplex, different only in scale and material from the mall-anchor megatheaters by the Gap they get their kids’ clothes at.

Of course, you want to go back:

Herman, whose company, Urban Anthology, helped bring Victoria’s Secret and American Apparel stores to Uptown, said he is among those who would hate to see the neighborhood lose such a landmark. That decision is up to bar owner Frank Toonen, 88, who approached Herman about the retail plan, the developer said.

Toonen wants to sell the property to raise money that he plans to leave to his wife and to the widow of his son, Kenneth Toonen, who ran the bar for several decades before he passed away last summer, said Herman.

“If they were younger and more able to handle running the business, they would, but as it stands this is strictly an estate-divestment situation,” Herman said.

I have fond memories of that time, of course.  The temptation to go memorialize the era by walking in, hitting on and striking out with a U of M girl, handing off a demo tape, and puking in a back-alley dumpster is certainly there…

…but, these days, manageable.

One of the biggest whacks upside the head of the local blogging/trivia community this past year was the Met Council’s ruling that bars that’d established “smoking patios” outside their premises had to pay fees on that extra square footage as if it was indoor, year-round revenue-generating space.  This has forced Twin Cities’ bars to shut down the practice of having special patios for smokers, especially cigar buffs.

Of course, it’s been a bigger whack upside the head for the bar owners themselves.  Already on the ropes from the smoking ban, the extra smack to their summer revenue (summer is already a slow time for most bars) has pushed many Twin Cites establishments up to and in some cases over the edge.

And in a rare move for a bureaucracy, the Met Council seems to be considering responding to the pressure from bar owners and their patrons.  There’ll be a hearing this coming Tuesday afternoon to reconsider the fee structure.  I’m not sure if there’s time to salvage the summer (or if the provision will be lifted in time to set up a patio for the MOB party)…

…but I am sure that the region’s anti-smoking gestapo will take a break from whinging about the “orchestration” of town-hall meeting outrage over healthcare to organize plenty of people to come to the meeting to bitch about secondhand smoke.

This is where you come in.

Bureaucrats take phone calls seriously.  They – the smart ones, anyway – know that every phone call represents 100 people who didn’t call them.  One call represents 100 like-minded people; it’s public relations truism.

And so it’d be great if you could take a moment to contact the members of the Met Council.   Here they are.  Please take a moment and leave them polite, reasoned messages asking them to reconsider their policy; it’s killing bars, putting people out of work, and playing into the hands of chain restaurants and establishments.  Phone is better than email, but either is vastly better than letting the other guys have the stage to themselves.

Of course if you are free on Tuesday, here are the details:

Proposed Changes to the Service Availability Charge (SAC)Rules Regarding Outdoor Spaces Public Information Meeting: 1 p.m., Chambers

I might…just…be able to make it.  Fingers crossed.

My neighbor Peter over at Growing Things (he’s a garding machine) writes about an encounter with some Minneapolis panhandlers:

Unlike most Twin Cities panhandlers, their faces didn’t bear the wear and tear of decades of addiction.

While two lounged in the shade of a small tree, one held a hand-lettered sign which read:

If you voted for OBAMA, you owe me some CHANGE.

I regret that I left my camera at home.

Oh, me too.

I was glad to see that the families of the 35W bridge collapse victims Enixed the idea of a formal memorial service to commemorate Saturday’s second anniversary of the disaster:

Officials wisely decided not to hold a public ceremony today — the second anniversary of the collapse — saying relatives of the victims and others tied to the event wanted to move on with their lives. They should have that opportunity.

Of course, there are some loose ends that do need to get cleaned up.

The Strib gets one of them right:

So, too, should the entire community be able to reclaim Bohemian Flats and to drive along the Mississippi River near downtown Minneapolis without being reminded of the horror of August 2007, when 13 people lost their lives a few hundred yards upstream.

The Flats are still being used to store all the steel wreckage from the salvage job; the various lawyers involved in the slew of lawsuits filed over the collapse (last Friday was the deadline for actions) want all the old girders preserved in case they need them.

Of course, the Strib missed one big mess of wreckage;the credibility of not a few local politicians and, lest we forget, the Strib itself.ater on Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to raise the gas tax?  When some backroom political flak literally claimed that the entire MNGOP should be indicted for murder?
Remember when Nick Coleman not only blamed the Taxpayers League, but haughtily blew off the National Transportation Safety Board’s initial findings when they disagreed with him?

None of them have copped to their ghoulish hijacking of a tragedy for their own gain.

Where is the decency?

In the wake of Minneapolis’ 35W bridge disaster – which occured two years ago tomorrow – Democrats nationwide use the tragedy as yet another reason to call for more taxes, to pay for more “infrastructure” spending.

Minnesota DFLers used the tragedy as an occasion to pillory Governor Pawlenty – in some particularly ghoulish cases, even before the last girder had fallen into the river – for having vetoed a hike in the state gas tax, and for having taken and held to a “no new taxes” pledge five years earlier, during his nomination process.

In response, many of us asked, hypothetically, “if the DFL had had complete control of the state for the past ten  years – if Skip Humphrey had beaten Jesse Ventura and Norm Coleman – do you homestly believe they’d have spent that time and money doing the unglamorous, tedious, exquisitely expensive work of going and inspecting and repairing old infrastructure (or not-so-old infrastructure – the 35W bridge was half the age of the bridges up and downstream from it) rather than more-visible work, like building light rail and more roads?”

We were, of course, absolutely correct:

Tens of thousands of unsafe or decaying bridges carrying 100 million drivers a day must wait for repairs because states are spending stimulus money on spans that are already in good shape or on easier projects like repaving roads, an Associated Press analysis shows.President Barack Obama urged Congress last winter to pass his $787 billion stimulus package so some of the economic recovery money could be used to rebuild what he called America’s “crumbling bridges.” Lawmakers said it was a historic chance to chip away at the $65 billion backlog of deficient structures, often neglected until a catastrophe like the Minneapolis bridge that collapsed two years ago this Saturday.

The lesson?  Raising taxes and assuming that Democrats will use the money to pay for maintenance is like giving a teenager a credit card to buy school supplies.

Back in 2002, a couple of unnamed conservatives walked into the State Green Party Convention on a lark, got themselves seated (because “credentials” were, at the time, an authoritarian paternalistic relic of fascism, apparently), and nominated former Marine fighter pilot Ed McGaa – a firebreathing property rights conservative and absolute anti-Green – for governor.  Hilarity ensued; McGaa, who was not present at the convention, won the nomination.  Afterwards, he got in on the joke, running an extremely tongue-in-cheek campaign while the Greens gradually realized they’d been had, went through a cataclysmic soul-searching, and finally tossed him and ran perennial pest Ken Pentel.  McGaa, tongue in cheek or not, might have done better. 

It was a joke that got out of hand. 

It looks like the joke got paid back this weekend.

While I’m deliriously happy about Eva Ng – a genuine conservative and person with the kind of vision my city needs – running for Mayor of Saint Paul, it’s not all roses.

The Minneapolis GOP has endorsed “Papa” John Kolstad.  Kolstad, a DFLer who left the party because “centrism” frustrated him, next ran for the Attorney General slot as a Greenie (note to pretty much anyone; the presence of “Papa” in a political stage name is always always always a bad sign).

And now – since the Greens have lost major-party status – he’s “running as a Republican”.

Kolstad has run for a DFL state senate seat and Atty. General (Green Party endorsed). His reasons for running for Atty General in 2006: http://dailyjam.blogspot.com/2006/06/minnesota-green-party-slate-of-2006.html

First, Becky Lourey has said she would bring the National Guard troops home from Iraq. Kolstad would use the attorney general’s office to assist her in that cause.

Second, as a strong supporter of Single Payer Health Insurance, Kolstad would continue the work Hatch has done in holding insurance company executives’ feet to the fire. He would also fight any legal challenges to Single Payer waged by the insurance companies.

Third, he would use the attorney general’s office to fight on behalf of the environment. If you are creating greenhouse gases by driving a gas guzzler, you should pay for it. He suspects collusion between coal companies and electric companies, and he’d like to investigate that. How can electric companies charge rate-payers to pay farmers not to use wind turbines to generate safe, renewable energy? He’d like to look into that.

Look, the GOP is a big tent, but this is lunacy. 

And while I’ve led the Twin Cities’ punditry in trying to welcome the Ron Paul supporters to the party, we have to draw the line at nominating a crypto-maoist like Kolstad.  Word has it that it was the Ronulans on the Minneapolis City Committee that pushed the decidedly non-conservative, non-Republican Kolstad through the process. 

Rules is rules.  Elections go to those who show up.  Duly noted.

But it is time for actual Republicans to take their party back in Minneapolis.  Somehow we in Saint Paul managed to incorporate the energy and vitality of the Paulbots, without losing our conservative souls.  Minneapolis needs to do the same.

Minneapolis Republicans; you need to rise up and condem this theft of your party by – words fail me – enemies of what you believe in.

Jeff Johnson’s “Hennepin County Taxpayer Watchdog” blog is one of my favorite new blogs.  Every county should have one, provided every county in Minnesota has someone in it who’s dedicated to kicking butt for taxpayers.  Sadly, many don’t.

Earlier this week, Jeff took on one of the propaganda points that always attend “green” projects: “they’ll save money”.

In this case, Johnson looks at a solar panel project at a Henco public works building in Medina that purportedly would save Henco taxpayers “$15,000 per year”.

Jeff just wanted to know; when?

Before I provide you the answer to my question, let me say that there is no magic pay-off period for such projects. Some argue that an energy conservation project is successful if it pays for itself in 7 to 8 years. Others argue it can be 10 to 12. I’ve even heard a few people argue that it should be slightly longer than that, based on the positive effect (regardless of how small) such projects allegedly have on the environment. I don’t have a firm opinion yet as to where I fall on the pay-off period, but I’m certainly comfortable with something in the 10-year range for a project such as this.

So how long will the Henco taxpayer have to wait to see a return on their “investment”?

The Public Works Solar Panels? Well, after some explanation to me about how this project is not “all about the bottom line” I learned that they cost about $900,000.

Yes, these solar panels will begin to save the taxpayers of Hennepin County $15,000 per year in 2070. My 5th grade son, Thor, will be 71. I will be dead. And I’m willing to wager that the Hennepin County Public Works building in Medina will be long gone.

But on the bright side, we’ll still be paying off the deficit…

Methinks “No” isn’t the answer the Strib was looking for.

Instant Poll: Is the Shubert Theater project a good use of stimulus funds?

I’m happy to see that longtime NARN friend Jeff Johnson, the guy who should be the Attorney General of Minnesota in a just world, is finally doing a blog:

I am a member of the 7-member Hennepin County Board of Commissioners myself. I was first elected to the Board last November and sworn in this January. In my first few months, I’ve been amazed at the reach of the $1.7 billion annual county budget (larger than several state budgets) and the sometimes curious (and sometimes outrageous) ways this money is spent. As Hennepin County government actions largely fly under the media radar screen – despite our tremendous impact on your individual and business property taxes – I felt it time to provide an insider perspective.

The inner workings of county government – especially in Hennco – have needed some illuminating for quite some time now.

One of the most pleasant diversions the Twin Cities offer in the summer is a night out on the back patio at Keegans in the summer, playing trivia and torching up the odd cigar.

Y’see, while Minneapolis and then Minnesota banned smoking in bars, establishments that had outdoor space were able to have smoking patios – sort of like those miserable outside-the-office smoking areas, only with tables and chairsand waitresses and booze.

And when Minneapolis sees opportunities for the people to have fun that is not strictly regulated, it gets jealous.

According to Terry Keegan, the Met Council is driving the various city agencies to try to consider cigar patios as expansions to the bar, meaning they’d get charged full square-footage fees.

It’s an absurd interpretation, of course; the cigar patios are where people inside the bar go to grab a cigar and sit.  This is a baldfaced attempt to squeeze money out of bar owners, themselves caught in a double-whammy of tough economic times and times that were already straitened by Minnesota’s smoking ban, as well as continue the DFL’s attempt to regulate behavior.

So what is it going to take to get people to storm the barricades (rhetorically speaking, at least)?

Longtime commenter and NARN caller Fresch Fisch is finally, finally blogging.

And it’s not like there’s a shortage of material.  Fisch turns his gimlet eye on Minneapolis’ rather oddly-prioritized budget:

In the coming weeks Minneapolis will start cutting police, fire and street maintenance. All because they will not be getting LGA money from the state. So, cut essentials first, then add goofy stuff like this.http://www.tcdailyplanet.net/article/2009/02/06/bike-sharing-planned-minneapolis.html

That’s right! Amost “Yellow Bikes”! I am glad the writer, Jon Behm, did admit that the Saint Paul Yellow bike program was a disaster.

So, while the light bulbs will not be getting changed in the street lights, Minneapolis will find room for bike sharing.

How long will the voters of Minneapolis submit to not only being a one-party city, but such a badly-run one?

Instant Runoff Voting “won” a big battle this past week in court, and it looks as if Minneapolis is going to take a whack at the voting system.

In the wake of the recount, I think it’s a terrible idea; it is to the best of my knowledge impossible to conduct an actual recount of IRV elections, and if you don’t think you’ll eventually need to, you are naive enough to be a Minneapolis liberal.

But I’m not going to talk about that (yet).  I’m going to go after the voter-facing side of IRV (adapting a piece I wrote a little over a year ago in a Saint Paul online forum).
Background:  I analyze systems – software, hardware, processes, print publications, what have you – to empirically determine how usable they are.

And speaking not as a partisan, but as a professional whose entire line of work involves figuring how to make things easier for real people to use, there’s a truism at work whenever people design systems; the designer always thinks he/she has designed something so intuitive that someone’d have to be an idiot not to be able to figure out how to make it work as intended and designed.  It’s true for programmers writing websites, for executives designing processes for other people, for engineers building freeway ramps, for architects designing public spaces; everyone designs things to be blazingly intuitive – to people like them, other programmers, executives, engineers or architects.

And when those programmers, managers and engineers watch real people in controlled usability tests actually trying to do real-world things with those websites, processes, ramps and spaces, and making mistakes and doing things they were not intended to to, they tend to have one of the following reactions:

• “Nobody’s that stupid!”   But it’s not usually a matter of stupidity.  It’s human nature – especially if that human is not a programmer, executive, engineer or architect.
• “It’ll never happen in real life!”  But it just did!
• “Wow.  Who knew?  We gotta redesign this!”  These are the good programmers, executives, engineers and architects.

Although those who stump for IRV – the idea’s “programmers, executives” and so on – express it via rose-colored glasses (that, too, is human nature); they don’t say people who might hypothetically make mistkes voting in an instant-runoff election are “idiots”.

But I can see several places where confusion is potentially built into the system.

Allow me to walk through a fairly simple conundrum that faces usability people and, by the way, real people using real systems, drawn not from political ideology (of ANY sort!), but from the experience of someone who has had to ask these questions of programmers, executives and engineers for a living for the past decade.

Proponents explain the core of IRV pretty simply:

“you simply rank the candidates in the order in which you prefer them”

So when “simply” ranking, say, five candidates from top to bottom, do you number them 1-5, or 5-1?

Remember – in many Asian cultures, 1 is “better” than 5, while many people think bigger numbers are “better” than smaller numbers (like a hockey score).

And if you answer “that’ll be explained in the instructions”, please bear in mind that people – REAL people – tend not to read instructional writing, and retain even less for any amount of time.  That’s not the cynicism of a former tech writer talking (although it’s there!); the research on much explanatory writing, on forms or website, that people read and retain is comically small.

So – how do you make sure everyone gets the directions the same way?  Verbal instructions from poll staff?  Mightn’t those be potentially legally-problematic?
Will people be able to cast “Tie” votes if they have no preference?  Rank everyone “1” (or “5”), or rank five candidates “1,2,2,2,3” or “1,1,3,3,5?”, or “5,5,5,5,5”?  (If you don’t think people will try, think again!)  What’ll happen to the ballots if people try to do that?  More importantly, how will people KNOW the consequences of trying that, whatever they are, and whether it’s OK or (emphatically) not?

All of you who chant “count every vote”: how many potential disqualifiers do you see in the above paragraph?

Let’s move past “process”, to mechanism. On what medium do people cast their vote in an IRV system – a paper ballot?  Marked with what?  Pencil?  If they change their mind before submitting the ballot, how are changes made?  Erasing numbers? How does one know, for audit purposes, WHO erased the number, then?  What if they do a poor job of erasing (with older people with arthritic hands, this is not uncommon); how are ambiguities caused by poor erasing and faint handwriting resolved?

How about people who don’t erase, but scribble or overwrite?

And don’t bother replying “tell them to get a new ballot”.  That’s a not-insignificant part of the current voting instructions – and we all know how many “spoiled” ballots turned up in the Coleman/Smalley race, don’t we?
And let’s not forget that immigrants frequently write numbers differently than Americans do; I run into this myself, since I usually use German numbering, and sometimes people read my “1”s as “7”s, and my “7s” as “4”s (I cross my 7s, European-style); how are these ambiguities to be resolved?  And if the answer is “by telling immigrants to make sure they use American numbers”, do you realize the problems you’ll run into?

Indeed, how are the votes of the handicapped to be tallied?  How would someone with, say, arthritic hands vote?  (I won’t even ask the obvious question about voting for the blind; I’ll have to assume SOMEONE’s on top of that one).

And none of this even touches on the issue of “how the ballots are designed”.  And that is a huge issue. Remember – whomever designed the infamous Broward County Butterfly Ballot thought they had a perfectly workable, usable design!

——

Bear in mind that NONE of the issues I raised above is, in my decade’s experience as a usability geek, outlandish, or even especially far-fetched; certainly none of them are remotely political.  These are the sorts of issues someone in my field expects to see when any new system intersects with new users.  Smart system owners run usability tests before their system “goes live”, and fix the issues they encounter.  Dumb ones…well, thank goodness for them, since usability disasters keep me employed.

I’d be very interested in seeing a real, live, end-to-end, empirical test of an IRV system and all of its components – the ranking system, the ballot and media, the counting process, the system of explaining the process to new voters in various languages – and seeing how it really works in a reasonably-complex, contested polling.

I say “contested” for a reason, by the way; IRV seems to have only been tried in locales with relatively monobloc politics, from what I’ve seen.  Without trying to judge the politics themselves, professionally speaking, that’s not necessarily a thorough workout.

Answer those questions, IRV proponents (preferably never using the phrase “nobody’s that dumb” in the process; it’s not “dumb”, but it’s human nature).

Then we can move on to the other questions:

• How do you do recounts?
• Why do all of you lefties who spent from 2000-2006 whinging about how Diebold and its electronic voting machines were in the bag for the GOP square that with the fact that IRV tallies are entirely, 100%, irrevocably computer-based?

Sound off!