Category Archives: St. Paul

Articles about Saint Paul – a beautiful city with boundless character, beset by a deeply stupid government.

It Seems Like A Simple Adjustment

Posted on by
7

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

We must knock down a warehouse to build a ballpark for the St. Paul Saints and also give $200,000 to artists to decorate the empty Union Station. Because it’s too expensive not to.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could afford to let some developer convert the warehouse into condo lofts, leave the Saints in their existing ballpark and allow travelers to enjoy the classic beauty of the station as-is? I’d be willing to spring for that. How much would that cost?

Joe Doakes

To the Minnesota bureaucrat, spending itself is both beautiful and efficient.  Or something.

Status Report

Posted on by
13

The Saint Paul media world is holding its collective (heh) breath, wondering if Chris Coleman is going to announce a campaign for a third time as mayor.

You can read the whole MPR piece here – it notes that Coleman has jacked up taxes at a record pace, as well as the DFL’s defense (“stuff costs money!”).

But I wanted to focus on this quotelet:

Taxes may be higher, but Coleman said residents are getting their money’s worth.

“If we’re going to have a great city that’s a safe city, a literate city, a fun city, a great place to live, you have to invest,” Coleman said. “And I think our citizens have continually said, ‘Yes, we’re prepared to pay for those things.”

So let’s run those claims through the “Saint Paul Residentmeter”.

  • Safe – Well, it’s better than it was in the eighties, when parts of Frogtown and the lower East Side were pretty malevolent.  But it’s not that much better.
  • Literate – Saint Paul’s school system has among the worst achievement gaps in the country. Parents who can – especially minorities – are leaving the system as fast as they can.
  • Fun – If you’re a hockey or Ordway fan, Downtown is a fine place.  There are some niches of fun to be had depending on what floats your boat.  And some of our older traditions (WInter Carnival, Grand Old Day) and even some newer ones (Crashed Ice) are pretty cool.  But the most fun thing about Saint Paul most of the time is the fact that we have Minneapolis next door.
  • Great place to live – Well, it’d better be.  We’re paying enough – and God knows you can’t sell a house in this town, with the city unloading all those foreclosures for a song.
  • Great city – Great?  The city is feeling a lot like it did during the Scheibel years; beaten-down, depressed.  Saint Paul is not recovering from the recession as fast as Minneapolis, and the slow job recovery is actually better than the recovery in housing prices (there isn’t really much).

Saint Paul is showing all the ills that generations of one-party rule bring to a city.

Pothole-ier Than Thou

Posted on by
3

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

It snowed 8 inches last night. The city streets have not been plowed and won’t be, until sometime tomorrow. But those of us who drove on the snow-covered streets, packing down the snow so the plows can’t scrape it off tonight and spinning the packed snow into ice at every intersection, are morally superior to those who looked out the window and said “To Hell with it, I’ve got leave coming, I’m taking the day off.”

At least, I hope we are. I’d hate like the dickens to be sitting in my cubicle not only dumber than those who stayed home, but morally equal, too.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Gotta say, while I rarely work from home, it is the absolute greatest thing in the world today.

Public Dyslexia

Posted on by
Reply

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Turns out that the city council, acting as the HRA board, has allocated “$35,825 to settle costs related to the site. The HRA acquired the property from the Selby Area Community Development Corporation (SACDC) in December in exchange for $50,000.00 that the corporation owed the city. Since then, city staff learned there were delinquent taxes on the property.”

Why is it that the government can’t get a budget to balance? Could it be incompetence like this? They accept a pig in a poke, in payment of the last pig in a poke? They took a property in payment of a debt without first checking to see if it’s encumbered? Morons. I could see that with granny who takes the neighbor’s lot not knowing better. But this is the city, with it’s nearly limitless resources and unlimited access to the property records.

Bet you a nickel some of those delinquent taxes were special assessments for sidewalk shoveling levied by . . . the city itself!

Joe Doakes, Como Park

It’s Saint Paul.  The left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing.  This is no right hand.

My Urban-Renewal Idea

Posted on by
8

On a Saint Paul discussion forum, someone asked “what would you do to better the city if someone gave you a couple million dollars?”

It took me about two seconds to answer; I’ve been thinking about this one for years and years.

If someone gave me a couple million dollars my plan would look something like this:

  1. Buy three adjacent blocks of blighted housing in a down-market neighborhood that’s been ravaged by the foreclosure crisis – Frogtown, the North End, the lower East Side.  There are some blocks where half the houses are foreclosed, vacant or demolished.  I’d like to find one of those – preferably one with an old storefront or two on one of the corners.
  2. Remodel them, at least in terms of basics, leaving room for sweat equity.
  3. Sell the houses on one of the blocks.  Price them at market rates - or half-price for nuclear families where  both of the heads of household had a clean criminal record and one or both had a carry permit and could prove they owned legal firearms.  Give a cumulative five percent discount for each of the following: veterans, charter or private school teachers, cops or firemen.  In other words, a family who had a veteran, a firefighter and a charter school teacher with a permit could get the house for 35% of the already-depressed market value.
  4. Lop off another 10% of the balance if crime on the block and on surrounding blocks drops below neighborhood or city averages in, say, a year or two.
  5. Give one of the storefronts to a small charter school rent-free for five years.
  6. Wait three years and watch as the crime rate plummets, and property values rise.
  7. Sell the other two blocks at the new, higher-value market rates; no half-off for permittees with guns, but offer cumulative ten percent discounts for carry permit holders with firearms, cops/firemen and charter/private teachers.
  8. Plow the proceeds into repeating the process on neighboring blocks.
  9. Watch as the neighborhood, strong, self-reliant, free-enterprise oriented and virtually crime-free compared to the surrounding area, starts to wake up, noticing that the parts of the city run by the DFL are failing while the part run according to traditional conservative values – theirs – is doing well.  People in my project, and around and about it, start to ask “so why do we keep electing clueless DFLers to all city offices?”.
  10. Watch some more as control of Saint Paul flips from the DFL’s bobbleheaded one-party rule to conservative control, beginning an era of hard work that leads in modestly short order to a much, much better city.

I’m rarin’ to go.  Someone pony up!

Citizens: You Are Roadkill

Posted on by
3

Anh Trinh has been running Anh’s Beauty Salon, way down by University and Dale, for a couple of decades now.

Her business was one of the flood of Asian businesses that reclaimed University from blight and complete free-fall starting in about the eighties…

…and who are being displaced by the misguided “Train From Nowhere To Nowhere”.

Here, Anh testifies at the Met Council

Especially note the appearance by Jack McCann of the University Avenue Business Association.  Here’s his quote:

This project from planning to design to funding to construction can be summed up as dishonest and pathetic. An honest organization (which is not the Met Council) would have openly evaluated the real effects of shoehorning a project this size onto this avenue.

You hear this, people of St. Louis Park and Eden Prairie?  This is what awaits you if when the DFL jams the Southwest Light Rail down your throats.

Stuck On Stupid, Ineffective, Trivial

Posted on by
9

To:  The Saint Paul City Council
From: Mitch Berg, one of your few remaining ATMs
Re:  Your work ethic

The Saint Paul City Council, having saved the downtown economic scene, balanced the city’s budget without gang-raping the city’s few remaining productive taxpayers, preventing a free-fall in property values…

…sheesh, I’m sorry.  I was laughing.  But it wasn’t the mirthful laugh of the happy and carefree.  It was more the resigned hacking cough of the guy in the engine room of a ship whose captain just keeps on ramming icebergs, since he’s still technically “afloat”, just to see what’ll happen.

Where was I?

Oh, yeah.  The City Council wants to ban scary guns, provided that they’re just the ones in the hands of the law-abiding Minnesotan:

At the Wednesday, Jan. 2 council meeting, they amended their annual request to lawmakers to include a crackdown on semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines.

They join a chorus of municipal bodies, politicians and Hollywood celebrities clamoring for tighter gun laws in the wake of the horrific school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut.

Let’s summarize here:

  • The council of a stagnant city with a shriveling business base and whose only real resource anymore is “cheap-ish housing in a crap market” has…
  • …wasted city time to pass a meaningless resolution to…
  • …punish the vast majority of gun owners, the scrupulously law-abiding ones, because of…
  • …something they didn’t do, urging an action that…
  • …has never, ever, not even once, had a positive effect on violent crime, but indeed is positively linked to higher violent crime rates.

By the way, I’d like a word with the authors of the City Hall Scoop blog post:

Some gun enthusiasts are dubious that a ban on semi-automatics would have prevented the Newtown tragedy and other tragic gun deaths.

Well, no – not just “gun enthusiasts”, but “people who actually study the issue empirically, rather than filtering it through partisan politics”.

Let’s try to get that straight.

Here’s the release from Council Member Chris Tolbert’s office:

Councilmember Tolbert amends City’s 2013 Legislative Agenda to support changes to State and Federal gun regulation

St. Paul – In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy and gun violence around the country, Councilmember Chris Tolbert (Ward 3) and the Saint Paul City Council unanimously amended the City’s Legislative Agenda to include provisions related to gun regulation. Resolution 13-23 encourages the backing of amendments to State laws that could ban semi-automatic weapons and high capacity magazines.

Mr. Tolbert:  I may or may not own several semi-automatic weapons, of a type not dissimilar to the kind that the police and deputies who protect you at your City Hall office carry.  And like the majority of hunting weapons found throughout Minnesota.

Being a cake-eating Highland-Park DFL lotus-eater, you may not know any of this.

And apparently you don’t know what happened the last time a bunch of metro DFLers started on a tear against the law-abiding, gun-owning citizen.

Check out the 2002 Minnesota legislative elections.  Or, for that matter, the 1994 Congressional elections.

Keep up the great work, Mr. Tolbert and all of your colleagues.  The GOP overrreached on gay marriage – an issue that affects a tiny minority of Minnesotans – and you see what it cost ‘em.

Over half of Minnesotans own guns.  Many of them vote DFL.  Many of them live outside the smothering domain of the urban DFL, and take the Second Amendment seriously.

So just keep on doing what you do.  Sincerely.

That is all.

Due To DFL Control

Posted on by
23

The Saint Paul Macy’s is closing in March.

Macy’s is closing its St. Paul store this spring, leaving downtown without a major retailer and bringing to a close 50 years of continuous department store operations at the Wabasha Street location.

Store employees were to be told this week that the store will shut down in late March, according to sources who did not want to be named.

On the one hand, it’s not really a surprise.  The place has been a morgue for years.  The only reason it stayed open as long as it did was to stay within the terms of a loan from the city back in 2002.  Since they hit the ten year nut, a few million dollars are going to be forgiven, store or no store.

So to summarize:  No store, no more payback, no anchor retail in downtown Saint Paul.

No nothing.

On some St. Paul list-servers, some DFL-leaning residents are feeling chipper about it: “maybe Target will buy the space?”

I only worked downtown for about four years – but this was actually fairly busy, as I recall.

Nonsense.  Target didn’t get to be a huge retailer by being stupid.  Saint Paul is not a retail destination – if it were, there’d be no such announcement from Macy’s.

(“But Macy’s is just stupid!”, some might respond – but their share value is clipping along rather well, so whatever their other faults, they seem to know a bit about keeping their stores profitable).

I’ll predict the following:

  • If there’s a free-market tenant for the building?  I’ll say look forward to the world’s largest Dollar Tree.  Complete with three floors of parking.
  • But much more likely?  It’ll be rented out to the State of Minnesota, or some other agglomeration of government entities.  Likely as not by consolidating people in from smaller rentals around downtown.

Bottom line?  Six decades of DFL control have left downtown Saint Paul a ghost town, populated only by wan holdouts, scrappy and bargain-hungry small businesses, a few corporations that haven’t quite pulled the trigger on relocation yet, hipsters (waaaaay down by the Farmer’s Market), a few lucky businesses (up by the XCel and the Ordway, assuming hockey comes back someday), a lot of state offices, and – for about a catastrophic third of the office space – nothing at all.

While I realize that St. Paul’s city government – strangled as it’s been by one party rule for sixty years now – didn’t specifically set out to make Downtown into a cold Flint, I have to ask – if they had, how would things be different?

Dear Saint Paul Voters:  Remember that “Definition of Insanity” joke?  Doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result?

Pretty funny, huh?

 

Everything’s Been Solved

Posted on by
4

In St. Paul, the only reason the office vacancy rate is holding steady between a quarter and a third is because the state of Minnesota rents as much as they do.  Crime is rising, the tax base is shrinking, middle and working-class parents are fleeing the school system, the Midway and Frogtown are about to get a few islands of gentrification plopped (for a while, anyway) amid long stretches of government-imposed blight, taxes are up and “services” are down, the foreclosure crisis has gutted Frogtown, the North End and the lower East Side, property values are in the toilet and will stay there because of the City Council’s vacant building policies.

But we’re free of candy cigarettes, dammit!

A back-in-the-day soda shop in St. Paul has been busted for selling cigarettes — made of candy.

Lynden’s, on Hamline Avenue near Cretin-Derham Hall High School, said a city inspections official came in last week and gave the shop a warning and added that a misdemeanor citation — with a $500 fine — would be next if the non-carcinogenic confections continue to be sold.

And how was it that the City of Saint Paul was caused to spring into such decisive action?

“Somebody from Bloomington called and reported us,” Lynden said. “The whole thing is pretty weird.”

The folks at Lynden’s should have donated more to the DFL, apparently.

UPDATE: Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The City of St. Paul is looking out For The Children, as usual.

Best comment on-line: “It’s true, candy cigarettes are a gateway drug to real cigarettes. I used to eat Gummi Worms and now I crave night-crawlers!”

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Strooth.  I started eating Lemonheads.  I became a huge Evan Dando fan.

(#forgottennineties)

Streets Of Saint Paaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaul

Posted on by
11

I walked out Monday morning to carry a bag of trash to the dumpster.  The alley was spotlessly plowed.  In Saint Paul, we have to contract for our own alley plowing; on my block, we pony up about $20 a year to hire a guy who, as luck has it, lives on the same block, so he has to plow the alley to get to work and back home again.

Anyway – blocks in Saint Paul that can work together are generally plowed quickly and effectively.  Mine’s luckier (and works better) than many, perhaps, but it works.

Which is great, because it gives you a nice clean bit of pavement to get a running head start onto the side streets.

I’ve seen roads this bad in Saint Paul – but usually only after double the snowfall.  Sunday was a bunch of snow – 12-14 inches or so – but we’ve certainly seen worse.

But Tuesday morning, it took me 70 minutes to get from the Midway to Highway 5.  That’s ten minutes worse than Monday.  Along the way, I saw…:

  • A truck with a horse trailer vainly spinning its tires for ten minutes, trying to get traction in the middle of traffic.  On Snelling, southbound on the almost imperceptibly gentle grade north of Selby, by O’Gara’s.
  • A row of cars on a steeper hill, behind a car that was spinning like mad, trying to find some scrap of traction.
  • God only knows how many fender benders
  • And, on Fairview southbound toward Ford Parkway, as I skidded for – I kid you not – half a block (ABS brakes rattling, feet eventually pumping) toward the cross street, a Honda Civic skidding in behind me, going waaaaaaay too fast.  I took the last bit of directional control I could find and steered for the plow bank.  The Civic, driven by a rattled-looking woman and coated with “Vote No” and “Obama” stickers, sailed past and into the intersection – and then gunned it across, through the red light.
  • And finally…streets in Bloomington that were in perfectly fine shape.

The City of Saint Paul seems to have gotten behind the eight ball; mid-day yesterday they put up an announcement on their website, which explained that…:

It has been repeatedly commented that the roads seem worse today than yesterday. That is a true statement,particularly at the intersections the roads are worse. The temperatures overnight caused what had snow had started melting to freeze as ice. The situation at the intersections is then made worse as drivers accelerate spinning their wheels and when they don’t move as fast as they thought accelerate even further creating more heat and water making the situation worse – Not better. (Tip: when at an intersection and stopped take your foot off the brake and let the car begin to move on its own and accelerate slowly. If wheels start to spin back off the accelerator until car starts moving again)

This morning we began adding sand to our salt mix to provide some grit. As of noon we have placed just over 700 tons of salt on the street. This is almost three times the amount of salt we use in a typical snow event. While we are working on our salt conservation we are NOT going light on salt. in fact, at 11am, we increased our application rate by 30% to 100% to help cut the thicker snowpack. The conditions at this time warrant the need for more salt and that is what we are doing.

That’s all fine – and there are some good tips in there.  And there’s no knock on the plow drivers, who are definitely out plowing roads.  And the announcement is right, inasmuch as the snow fell on warm ground (remember how recently the temps were in the forties?) and then got hit by snow and a cold snap.

But here’s a question directed at a city government that has jacked up property taxes by nearly half in the past few years, and whose surrogates respond to any guff about taxes “how do you think we pay for snow-plowing?”:  for the past two nights, I’ve driven north on a Snelling Avenue that feels like an Andean goat path, a jarring washboard ride that I think may have rattled a filling out of my tooth…

…until I get north of Larpenteur.  Where it gets nice and smooth and dry and safe.

Ditto Hamline, Lexington, Fairview, Cleveland…

…American Boulevard, France Avenue, Penn Avenue…

…you get the picture.  What do all of them know that the City of Saint Paul doesn’t?

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Saint Paul never plows alleys and only plows residential streets during “snow emergencies” long after the snow is packed down by traffic.

Businesses privately plow parking lots and residents privately plow alleys, but what good are they if the street isn’t plowed?

St. Paul should allow residents to hire private side street plowing. Do it block-by-block and give a property tax credit to those who join. We’d get better service, plow operators would prosper, streets would be safer, city would save money. What’s not to love?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Not sure if it’s “allowed” or not, but the guy who does my alley also gets one of my block’s side streets.   I think of it as our little oasis of street sanity.

This past few days, we’ve needed it.

Anyway, now I’m off to try to find a less-lethal route to work.

Anybody know where I can hire a Sherpa?

This Guy Would Have Made A Good Saint Paul Republican

Posted on by
5

I couldn’t resist:

I was 234th through the polling line in St. Paul Ward 4 Precinct 14. Turnout was moderate, maybe a little lighter than I’ve seen; I remember it being much heavier at the same time of the day back in 2008 and especially 2004.

I voted GOP down the line, as promised; Romney/Ryan, Bills, Hernandez, Karschnia, Lipp.

I also voted Yes on Voter ID (doy) and on Marriage, for the reasons I explained yesterday.

Help Wanted

Posted on by
2

I think this is going to be a humdinger of an election.  Alongside my predictions from this morning – GOP holds both chambers of the Legislature – I think Chip Cravaack will stave off Rick Nolan, setting the stage for what could be an epic realignment in Minnesota politics.

Beyond that?  I think Lee Byberg has laid the groundwork for what could be – let’s be conservative, here – a result that is unexpectedly good, and disconcerting for Collin Peterson.  And I think it would have happened even without his improvident slander of pro-lifers.

And while I think it’ll take a complete economic collapse and mass civil disorder to make Minneapolis anything but a DFL playground, I think Chris Fields is going to surprise people with his results on November 7.  He’s run a masterful campaign; in a just world, there would be no contest; in a district that wasn’t a one-party thug-ocracy, the statesmanly Fields would make short work of the whiny, petulant Ellison.

As to the 4th CD?

Here’s where we need your help.

Redistricting shaved Betty McCollum’s advantage down, but it didn’t gut it.  The 4th Congressional District was as blue as the Oceana Ministry of Truth’s uniforms before redistricting, of course; and it absorbed a lot of purple territory in Stillwater and Woodbury (as well as a few bright-red districts full of Real Americans up in Grant Township).

Which is a huge improvement, don’t get me wrong.

And so Tony Hernandez has been fighting this campaign to win.  And along with that, there’s been a solid effort by a lot  of candidates at the legislative level.  I think we’ve got a solid shot at four or five new seats in the legislature, either flips or open seats, as well as defending the seats we already do have.

And – this is huge – I think Blake Huffman, Dennis Dunnigan and Sue Jeffers have a solid shot at getting on the Ramsey County Commission.  And if that happens, the Ramco Commission will have a conservative majority!

If there’s a habit from the Old Fourth that we need to put to rest, it’s the idea that Saint Paul and Ramsey County Republicans only turn out when they think it matters – competitive Presidential, Gubernatorial and Senate races.  The media has done a painstaking, and fraudulent, job of trying to convince them that the Presidential and Senate races are foregone conclusions; they do it to try to convince Republicans not to show up at the polls.

This is where you come in.

The Hernandez Campaign is organizing a phone bank – along with several other campaigns and BPOUs in the 4th CD – to Get Out The Vote, starting tonight and running up until the election.

And we need people to sign up by clicking here and picking a time

Whether you’re a Paleocon, a Neocon, a Ronulan, a LIbertarian, or even an old-school Eastside Kennedy Democrat who’s had enough of the current regime, this is your chance to help convince people that this election makes a difference, and to help cajole them to the polls.

The fact is, Romney has a chance.  Tony Hernandez has a shot at shocking the world – perhaps by winning, perhaps by showing the state that the Fourth is not a safe sinecure and convincing Betty that a nice cushy six-figure gig with a non-profit is a lot less work in 2014.  And if we stick the landing on all five (or more!) of the legislative opportunities and the Ramco Commission, this will have an immediate and lasting effect on politics at the state level.  .

While The City Burns

Posted on by
7

Saint Paul’s business sector is collapsing.  If downtown business occupancy rates are under 30%,it’s only because state government has been renting so much of it; the City is also party to the destruction of the downmarket but once-at-least-breathing University Avenue business strip.  Crime is rising, the school system is garbage (although the superintendent is doing the usual fine job of pre-emptively foisting the blame on the taxpayers), and with over 1,000 vacant properties (with many more forfeited via one path or another to the city, which is busy dumping them on the market for peanuts after filtering them through the non-profit system that helps install so many of the City Council in office), it’s impossible to sell a house without getting the fiscal Abner Louima treatment.

The Saint Paul Council, and Mayor Coleman, are at a loss for a response other than “tax the living crap out of whoever in the city still pays taxes”.  And building indoor ice rinks and traffic roundabouts and bike expressways.

So when it comes to the whole “run a responsible city government that doesn’t impede the city’s success”, the Saint Paul City Council is a big fat flop

But everyone’s got their sweet spot.  The St. Paul City Council does excel at worthless smug symbolic frippery:

St. Paul became the first city in Minnesota to formally resolve that federal military spending needs to be trimmed.

A resolution sponsored by St. Paul City Council member Amy Brendmoen unanimously passed the seven-member board Wednesday, Oct. 10. It asks the state’s congressional delegation to support shifting funding priorities from military operations to the needs of local communities.

“The bottom line for me is that federal spending impacts the money that goes to local initiatives,” Brendmoen said.

Of course, some of our old friends are involved (emphasis added):

 Wednesday’s council meeting was attended by members of various anti-war and social justice groups, as well as state Sen. Sandy Pappas, DFL-St. Paul, and anti-war activist Coleen Rowley.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, a professor [shouldn't that have scare quotes? - Ed.] of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas, said that if every American taxpayer received a bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, St. Paul taxpayers’ share would total an estimated $1.7 billion over the past decade.

I guess you have to be a highly-educated “peace studies” “professor” to think “military spending” is done in the form of “government goodies” coupons that can be redeemed for more ice rinks and light rail trains.

But what if that putative 1.7 bill had been available for local spending, rather than exacted by the IRS or borrowed from China?

With people like Sandy Pappas and the Saint Paul City Council in charge, we’d have gotten $1.7 billion more in ice rinks, drinking fountain art and electric cars for city employees.

This sort of thing is apparently all the rage among PC liberal circles these days:

Other major cities to pass resolutions in favor of trimming military spending are Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Hartford, Conn. Rowley said peace activists have approached the city councils in Eagan and Lakeville but have yet to receive responses. They also plan to approach Apple Valley, Inver Grove Heights, Shoreview and Mounds View officials in coming days.

If we could trade “trimming the defense budget” with “sending the city councils of Saint Paul, Philly, LA and Hartford to Afghanistan”, I think it’d be a fair trade for everyone.

Flaking, Part II

Posted on by
2

This morning, we addressed Aaron Brown’s look at HD6B, up on the Iron Range, where political newcomer Jesse Colangelo is running a helluvva race against DFL/union kommissar Jason Metsa.

Today – some older but equally intrigueing news that I just haven’t had time to get to; there is one precinct in Saint Paul that is ever-so-close to voting Republican.

The Pioneer Press’ Frederick Melo reported on this a few weeks back:

The intersection of Cretin and Selby avenues is the heart of Ward 4, Precinct 6, a precinct that, like the other 96, mostly has long favored Democrats in local, state and national elections.

But in this precinct, Republicans have managed to trim the Democrats’ lead by larger and larger numbers in the past 10 years and even chose Republican Sen. Norm Coleman over Democratic challenger Al Franken in 2008.

Looking at the results at the SOS site, it’s one precinct where Tony Hernandez’ 2010 campaign came within eighit votes of Senator Dick Cohen.

Read the whole fascinating thing, assuming you didn’t a few weeks ago

And then ask yourself – if a precinct in a moldy blue one-party city like Saint Paul – aka Pyongyang on the Mississipi – turns red, what does that mean?

I mean, the fall of the Soviet Union started with protests in Gdansk – the Thunder Bay of the Baltic.

From small things, big things one day come.

(Optimistic?  If you’re not fundamentally an optimist, then there’s no point in being a Republican in St. Paul).

Time To Resist The Blackmail

Posted on by
13

Here’s the lefty playbook when it comes to exacting more tribute from the people:

  1. Make a demand.  Say, a 30% in crease in the school district levy, amounting to an increase in taxes of almost $40 million a year for eight years.
  2. Point out that if the voters don’t acquiesce to the demand, the thing that the taxpayers most value – in this case, 364 teachers.  That in a school district with 5,300 employees, only 58% of whom, a little over 3,000, ever set foot in a classroom.   That means you, the lefty, plan on laying off 12% of the district’s teachers – if the voters don’t give you what you want. (No administrator jobs are at risk, naturally)

It’s the way a petulant teenager acts when they don’t get their way.

It’s the choice Saint Paul Public Schools superintendent Valeria Silva has given the voters of Saint Paul.

And it’s worse than that.  Greg Copeland, chair of “Vote NO 30% Levy Tax Hike!”, writes:

“The St. Paul School Board majority, following the recommendation of the Superintendent, showed so little respect for St. Paul Voters that it chose to combine the expiring 2006 Levy Renewal with a 30% Levy Property Tax Hike in a single ballot question, rather than giving voters an open choice of two questions, as it easily could have done; one to renew and another on the proposed 30% levy property tax increase.”, said Copeland.

There are so many angles to this story.

Blackboard Fodder:  Teachers union members are among the most reliable Democrat voters out there.

But when every single bureaucracy that emjploys them uses this exact same tactic – using their jobs as bargaining chips, and never, ever touching the admin jobs that are the district’s greatest sacred cow – I have to wonder; don’t teachers ever get tired of it?

Do they all suffer from Stockholm Syndrome?

Mush, Sled Dogs!:  I’ve been a Saint Paul taxpayer for a quarter of an endless freaking century now.  Near as I can remember, the Saint Paul Public Schools have gotten every single levy increase they’ve ever asked for.   And yet the schools never get anything but worse.

The district is under the impression that the few remaining businesses and residents that actually pay taxes are like ATMs with no limit.

We are not.

In the immortal words of  Little Steven, “I’m getting tired of paying for sh*t I never get / Somebody promised justice, and they ain’t delivered yet”.

Subsidizing Failure:  And yet the schools get worse and worse.  The efflux of families, especially lower-income and immigrant families, to charter, parochial and suburban schools has ripped a minimum of 12% out of the district’s population (and many of the families are putting their money where their mouths are, and leaving the city).

And while some of the marquee schools – the ones that serve the white upper-middle class children of the more-connected government workers in Saint Anthony Park and Desnoyer and Highland are more or less adequate and make most of the right noises on command, the SPPS has among the worst achievement gaps in the US.

The Saint Paul Public School District is a failed venture.  Since it is a wholly-owned arm of the St. Paul DFL, it is in every way a symptom of the failure of one-party rule in Saint Paul. If it were a business, it would go out of business.  If it were a regulated business, it would be shut down by the government.  If it were a charter school, the Department of Education would padlock it and MN2020 would wrinkle its organization nose and write a snarky “white paper” on what a crappy idea it was.

But Superintendent Silva and the School Board – loyal DFLers all – are doing what they do every time the levy comes up; holding guns to the teachers’ heads, and saying “pay up or the teachers get it”.

Call it “Valeria’s Choice”.

The people of Saint Paul need to send our worthless, incompetent school district a message; do a better job, or (heh) get out of the way and give the job to someone who can.

 

Dinner Plans

Posted on by
Reply

Last week I blogged about the idea of having dinner at Mai Village on University this evening.  Mai Village, of course, is in the news because after spending nearly 20 years investing in the community around it – including upgrading from an almost-literal hole in the wall to a big, gorgeous room eight years ago – they are on the brink of extinction thanks to the Central Corridor.

I got sucked into a political thing this evening – so I’m thinking Sunday night instead.

I’ll be shooting to be there around 6:30 or so.

Apropos not much.

It’s The Saint Paul Way

Posted on by
10

I’ve lived in Saint Paul for most of the past 25 years.

And in that time, the half-life of a GOP campaign sign in my neighborhood is roughly five days.  They – every single one of them – gets stolen or destroyed.

“It’s just kids out pranking” say the local DFLers.  ”There’s nothing political about it”.  But my DFLer neighbors’ signs remain blissfully undisturbed.

(And at least one source reports to me that they’ve seen a middle-aged woman in a mini-van stealing Tony Hernandez signs.  Pranking kids?  I think freaking not).

Whomever it is, it means either…:

  • The DFL in Saint Paul runs a perennial campaign to silence dissent, or…
  • DFL-leaning “Kids” (and “moms”) have no respect for difference of opinion.

Neither of them is a particularly flattering verdict of the Saint Paul DFL.

I got this email earlier this week:

This is a burned Vote Yes sign in the Macalester Groveland neighborhood of St. Paul.

There are several Vote No signs up and down our block. All unscathed.

This needs reporting.

This is not the first time this has happened.

More of that respect for diversity, I guess.

Phản đối! Nó Là Gì Cho Bữa ăn Tối!

Posted on by
5

(Or words to that effect.  It’s from Google Translate.  But I figure most of my audience isn’t going to be able to correct me on this [1])

So I went to Mai Village last night.  Mai Village was one of the little welter of ma-and-pa small businesses that, between the mid-eighties and the beginning of the Central Corridor construction, helped make University Avenue…

…well, not exactly “thrive”, but then the only thing that really thrives in Saint Paul is government.  But compared to the desolate, vacant, blighted strip that the street was in the eighties, a couple of waves of Southeast Asian immigrants – Vietnamese and then H’mong, Lao and Cambodian – at least brought people, activity, commerce and life to the Avenue.

But it wasn’t the kind of business that Saint Paul’s government or the Met Council wanted – white, MPR-friendly, upper-middle-class, Caribou/Patagonia/Noodles-And-Company kinds of businesses.  So they decided to drive their accursed train straight down University.  This, on top of Minnesota and Saint Paul’s already-crushing regulatory burden.

Someone asked in the comment section the other day “what kind of business will make it on University?”  Little service-oriented businesses that don’t need parking, maybe?  Tiny hole-in-the-wall places with as little overhead as possible and fanatical little clienteles, I’d suspect.  The big winners, of course, will be the big national chains – Caribou, Patagonia, NoodleCo, Chipotle – that have the financial wherewithal to ride out the construction and the political clout to score vacant space near the stations that will squat in the street every half-mile through Frogtown and the near North End.

Of course, if you’re in between those stations, you’re screwed.

Mai Village isn’t a hole in the wall – not anymore.  When I first when there, of course, it was almost literally that; a nondescript little warren you entered through a door in a seedy-looking brick wall with very little fanfare directly off of Uni, with fantastic food.  They made the “mistake” of investing in their business and in University avenue, back before the Central Corridor.  They built a beautiful restaurant, full of Vietnamese artifacts and decor and big gorgeous windows looking out on the street, back when the street was a slowly rebuilding strip of humanity.  It’s big, comfortable, serene – and I do love the food.

Today the view is of rail construction, and the Mai Village is hurting, struggling to make the payments on an investment based on pre-construction customer base with a clientele that’s been gutted by the rail construction.

So I’d like to grab dinner there one of these nights (actually I did, last night, but I’m game again); I’m craving the chicken curry, truth be told.

So I’m going to have a…well, not “MOB” event, really, but I’m going to throw this out there; I’m going to Mai Village next Thursday, September 27.  Let’s say 7:00, to allow time for people to try to navigate the area.  I’ll just be grabbing some more chicken curry (or maybe the ginger pork with rice noodles – I’ve been craving good Bun Heo Nuong since Vina closed).  If you can show up, by all means do.  It’s not a “protest”, per se, although I won’t discourage people venting about the Mogadishu-like morass that the construction has inflicted on the neighborhood, the misery of trying to get anywhere in the area, and the difficulty of parking (and I’ll give you a St. Paul-resident’s shortcut or two for those of you coming to Frogtown for the first time, later next week).  And it’s not political, really – liberals’ money is just as good as anyone’s.   Come on down.

If you’d be so kind as to leave an RSVP in the comments, I’ll make sure I get enough seats when I go next week.  Or just show up.  Either way, hope to see you there.

Continue reading →

Here’s A Quick Poll

Posted on by
7

If I were to suggest a pseudo-MOB event , hypothetically, to get together at the Mai Village one of these next evenings – partly to support a business that is beleaguered by the Met Council’s Toy Train, partly to protest the Met Council, partly because Vietnamese food really rocks and has gotten criminally short shrift since Thai became the hip Asian cuisine – what would be better…:

  • Thursday night
  • Saturday night
  • Sunday night

Nothing super formal; just thinking about doing an informal “Hey, let’s do this” kind of thing.

(And wishing I’d done it for my good friends at the late, great Caribe Bistro while there was still time…)

Please sound off in the comments.

Eggs For The Omelet

Posted on by
10

Yet another University Avenue business – the Mai Village, which was one of the great University Avenue success stories until the Met Council’s toy train came along – is bleeding out the nose:

[Owner Mai] Nguyen said profits were down at least a third since construction began, which amounts to about $30,000 a month in losses. The $15,000 a month mortgage, which doesn’t include property taxes or insurance, has been impossible to keep up with, she said.

Mai Village did receive a $400,000 loan from the city — which has been deferred — to help build the restaurant. In addition, it received a $20,000 forgivable loan for help with construction-related losses, but Nguyen said that is a “drop in the bucket.”

In addition, the county halved the restaurant’s property taxes when the building’s value decreased a few years ago.

The couple has appealed to city leaders for more help, but has received little response, Nguyen said.

And the response (with emphasis added)?

City Council Member Melvin Carter III said his office has done everything it can to help Mai Village, and that there isn’t enough money to go around to help all the businesses that are suffering.

Anyone up for a MOB Vietnamese food night / slash / primer on the Central Corridor Business Destruction Zone?

Noted In Passing

Posted on by
2

Joe Doakes from Como Park apparently wants to cover the same turf Larry King did in his old “USA Today” column:

Minnesota is in the middle of the pack on gun rights, not rotten, not great.

Minorities can’t get a job because The White Man is oppressing them – now they need more sleep? What next, affirmative action for sleepers?

Federal shenanigans to artificially prop up the housing market? Or local Vacant Building ordinances at work?

Finally, can we get Russ Stark busy on this, so we can stop seeing those annoying Packers jerseys around town?

I may just apply for some sleep-based entitlement.  Today, anyway.

The District, Part V: Idle Hands, Redux

Posted on by
3

The other day, we mentioned 4th CD GOP chairman John Kysylyczyn’s canceling of the only meeting scheduled for the district’s full committee before the election.  Under district rules, the full committee is the only body that can authorize the district to donate the second half of the district’s customary $10,000 donation to its endorsed candidate, Tony Hernandez.

The committee did, in fact, vote last May to donate the first $5,000 installment to Hernandez.

The vote on the donation passed…:

VC6 Brown : Yea

VC5 Mueller: Yea

VC4 Windsor: Nay

VC3 Taylor: Yea

VC2 Grinols: Yea

VC1 Williams: Yea

State Exec VC Regnier: Yea

Secretary Overlander: Yea

Deputy Chair Boguszewski: Yea

Chair Kysylyczyn: Nay

So back when the district did, in fact, vote on donating money to Hernandez, Kysylyczyn voted no.

He had a reason, of course:

Chair Kysylyczyn: While I supported the donation of $5000 to the Hernandez campaign, I vote NO on the motion before the committee because I support the idea proposed by Mr. Boguszewski of disbursing funds through a matching funds donation process as he has done in his BPOU for their endorsed candidates. A portion of the funds would be provided up front, and the balance provided on a one to one match with private dollars, up to a $5000 cap. Calculations for the matching funds process would start the day the candidate was endorsed. It is my hope that a matching funds policy can be adopted in the future.

The point  of making your district donations a “match” is to provide an incentive for the candidates to work hard at fundraising.  It works just fine when you’re a BPOU trying to get a new, or recalcitrant, candidate to raise funds on a somewhat level playing field.

When fighting for a Congressional seat in a district that hasn’t sent a Republican to Washington in 65 years, with a party unit that can be fairly said to be “rebuilding”, and where Betty McCollum will have a million dollars coming right out of the gate?  While I get the idea, it seems at best to be just a little overelaborate over $5,000.

So what does it say to future candidates?  ”We’ve just endorsed you to spend the next seven months of your life working pretty close to full time, putting your job, family and real life on the sideline to take a run at one of the most difficult assignments anywhere in American politics, running as a Republican in CD4 against an incumbent candidate who sleeps on a king-size bed made of union money and will, if you are lucky, only outspend you 20-1.  So here’s a few hoops you gotta jump through.  Oh, you’re welcome!”

Of course, that was then – in May.  Now, there’s the little matter of getting another meeting called to get the second $5K installment voted on.

Help Shock The World This Weekend!

Posted on by
1

Tomorrow morning, three campaigns are going to get together to try to lit-drop Ramsey County.

They are:

  • Sue Jeffers, solid conservative and talk show host at a station not nearly as good as mine, who is running for the Ramsey County Commission, and who needs to win
  • Mark Fotsch, running for MN House in District 66A against John Lesch
  • Tony Hernandez, GOP endorsed candidate for US House in CD4 against Betty McCollum

And they need volunteers to help.

So if you’d like a shot at shocking the world, ping the Hernandez Campaign.  Volunteer to lit-drop tomorrow morning (details are at the post I linked).  It’s great exercise, it’s just lit-dropping (not door-knocking), and you’ll be helping to shock the world!

Please sign on up!

(And if you can’t drop literature, feel free to drop a few bucks in the kitty!)