A sample of the lunacy that occasionally bedevils Saint Paul (and may I say, thank heavens we live next door to even loonier Minneapolis) jumped out and bit us a few weeks ago, when Mayor Coleman declared his parking space a city park for a day.

St. Paulicy – one of my favorite blog discoveries of the past year – covered it like I’d have liked to, by quoting the Highland Villager’s Mike Mischke’s critique:

Mischke, responding to the “parking space park” declaration:

I had to consult a calendar to see if it was actually April 1.

The mayor’s supposed paean to the city’s parks system might have
caused nothing but head-scatching were it not for the serious threats
that the mayor’s 2008 budget represents to the same parks system, and
the imperial manner with which those threats are being dealt.

There is widespread disappointment among people who thought Coleman
would be far more receptive than his predecessor to involving
citizens in city decision-making. But that hasn’t proven to be the
case. Three cases in point:

* There is no contingency plan for the city’s rec centers that are
slated to be palmed off on private organizations to operate. If no
private partners are found to run those rec centers by the end of the
year, they will close. Yet rec center booster clubs, district
councils and youth sports organizations were blind-sided by the
mayor’s budget announcement, and they’re peeved about what they see
as the ham-handed, take-it-or-leave-it approach of the
administration. We’ve known for nearly a year about the city’s
looming budget woes, they say. Couldn’t the mayor have brought us
into the loop earlier and given us time to find private partners and
explore possible solutions with them?

* The off-leash dog park fiasco is another example of what happens
when the mayor shuns local parks advocates, district councils and
youth sports groups and simply sics Parks and Rec on a “solution” to
a problem that only a handful of Coleman’s constituents had
complained to him about: you get bitten on the backside.
Unfortunately, parks staff took the teeth marks when it was the mayor
who asked for them.

You should read the whole thing.

SPicy’s signoff:

In closing, Make sure to patronize Villager Advertisers, those that have not crossed the digital divide can generally county on reading editorials from Mischke that are (most of the time) right after SPicy’s own heart.  Let’s all make sure to support those who support the local press.

SPicy does have one great point; the Saint Paul neighborhood papers, along among the Twin Cities’ dead-tree media, are a bumptious, raucus, place that features some – hold onto your seat – genuine diversity of opinion.

Which helps (I say, helps) make up for that whole “one party town” thing.