The sentence from the title isn’t officially in whatever passes for a “constitution“ for the city of Saint Paul.
But it might as well be.
The neighborhood – southwest of Allianz Stadium, south of the freeway and west of Snelling – is the home of an awful lot of ELCA-haired “progressive“ with boundless spare time for nattering on about politics.
Most everything corrosive and stupid about politics in Saint Paul gestates in Merriam Park. It was where the smoking ban – which crushed bars in Saint Paul, before the ban went state wide Dash was conceived. It’s where the decades of waffling about what to do with the old Snelling Avenue bus barn got the energy behind its lack of energy (before giving the property away to a billionaire to build a soccer stadium). Support for light rail down the middle of University Avenue, with stops every half mile (as opposed to a route that would’ve made more sense)? Ranked choice voting?
Rent control?
If it’s a stupid idea that benefited only upper middle class, college educated white progressives, it started in Merriam Park.
“Including Saint Paul’s “Tony Soprano“ trash collection system?
What do you think?
A friend of the blog emails:
Illegal dumping did not go down, it went up in Saint Paul’s mafia organized trash collection system. Some say the promise of city wide trash collection was not met, but I still remember the promise of city wide trash collection was so that the elite, privileged Merriam Park residents wouldn’t have their deck sitting, coffee sipping morning ruined by the awful sound of 2 trash trucks running down their alley. To that end, the promise has been met.
But, illegal dumping hasn’t gone down? Huh, did anyone seriously believe it would? I know that I didn’t. The dumping that I see tends to be by renters moving out who aren’t dumping, per say, but offering free on curbside, oexcept no one wants the free on curbside stuff. It is mostly college student renters, since they move the most. Maybe the city should start requiring landlords renting to college students to have fully furnished apartments. (Strike that, let’s not give the council more ideas on how to restrict landlords).
Then there is President Brendmoen who tells is that equity demands we all pay into the system so that the elites continue to have a peaceful coffee sipping morning, er I mean she says it is so that trash remains affordable to the rest of us. She also thinks city staff and city owned trucks will do it even better.
I mean, trash was affordable back when we had less illegal dumping, back when Merriam Park residents were free to organize their neighbors around one trash hauler while the rest of us either used our skills to get cheaper prices or shared with our neighbors. Tell me again how getting the city even more involved will make it even better? Oh, yeah, they’ll probably screw us even better than the trash consortium mafia is.
Many of us tried to warn the city of St. Paul – or, at least, the parts of the city that weren’t the Merriam Park NIMBYs – “Minneapolis has had municipal trash collection paid for (and paid, and paid and payed) out of property taxes, for decades. And if you drive through Minneapolis, there is all sorts of trash illegally dumped on the street, even though trash collection is “free“”.
