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.
“you have to invest”
I’d like to pop the next pol that says that right in the kisser.
It’s the whole ‘quality of life’ debate. The assumption is with more government intrusion, the quality of life increases. Parasites know this assumption as “dinner.”
While I certainly don’t believe government should be run like a business (the primary differences being, in my humble opinion, that business typically should aspire to grow and expand, while government should strive to contract. The similarities: both should strive to operate as efficiently and cost effectively as possible)…seems elected officials have a pretty warped definition of of the term “investment”.
Regardless whether business or government, if the most tangible return on an “investment” is a warm feeling…it’s likely to fail.
Coleman and the St Paul city council could probably get a warm feeling and a similar return by collectively wetting themselves.
Coleman and his band of dancing hamsters are riding on the coattails of great men and women who are long gone.
If you look at the “contributions” of the present leadership, the $600 million “transit” station, and light rail, both are public accomodations destined to become empty eyesores that do nothing but drain the pockets of citizens with no return.
Look at the bus station/parking ramp they built across the street from the Xcel…it reminds me of nothing so much as the dilapidated housing project high rise on Cedar St. in Mpls. It’s fugly even though it’s new. And it sits on what was argueably the most prime piece of undeveloped real-estate in the city.
There was a plan to build a marina to replace the crumbling Island Station power plant, but Bucky Thune refused to let them tear down the completely unuseable shell that is home to a revolving troupe of homeless dope addicts, anarchists & alcoholics. So there it sits.
Just watch the mess the “Artists lofts” at the Schmidt brewery will become. I 100% guarantee it will be taken over by rent subsidized losers in 5 years.
All of the things that make St. Paul lovely were built 50-100 years ago.
I hate to keep beating my drum, but I given that I have travelled to every state in the US, and have seen all of the major cities, I feel qualified to say that I now happen to live within 5 miles of the most beautiful downtown in America.
Greenville, SC is what every moonbat mayor dreams of creating, but never will because they are completely bereft of the skill set it takes to pull something like this off.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/travel/2013/03/16/days-greenville/A8z64755qPO8FTDZQ6PQSO/story.html
By all accounts, Greenville was a shithole of empty buildings and empty resturaunts until the 1980’s. Nobody went there if they didn’t have to. Today it is absolutely awe inspiring.
All of the restored “post-reconstruction” buildings and new construction were funded by private investment. The city set aside some of the prime real-estate abound the falls, and spent plenty to make it beautiful, but they let investors buy, and build what they wanted on the rest of the surrounding river banks.
There were no minimum union participation rules, no “affordable housing” quotas. Just bring your best ideas and the funding to do them.
Both St. Paul and MPLS have the raw materials, but they are led by people that don’t see the value in doing something unless they are able to attach a busload of non-profits, government agencies, union thugs and assorted lefty hangers-on to the wagon.
They have no fricking clue, and their cities are dying.
I already pay more for a nicer St. Paul than residents of Roseville or Falcon Heights or even Minneapolis.
I pay to have my garbage hauled, it’s not a city service, just as I pay to have my alley plowed. I pay for another front-end alignment every Spring when potholes are finally filled. I pay to drive to suburban big box retailers because St. Paul chased them away. I pay extra sales tax to fund a hockey arena that I’ve never been inside and an extra Transit Improvement Tax for a train I’ll never ride. When my wife and I stayed at a hotel for our anniversary, we paid the special St. Paul lodging tax. And although the Assessor’s Estimated Fair Market Value of my house has steadily declined, my local property taxes have steadily increased.
Frankly, I can’t afford a nicer St. Paul, I can barely afford the one we have now.
Joe, why do you H8 children?
OK, last drum beat but I had to share this with you. With the exception of Reedy Falls park and the bike paths, everything you see here, including the public art, was 100% financed by private investment….and not a stinking unionthug anywhere to be found.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZqj5FrbyJY
See, if you let smart business people do what they do best, everything turns out for the best. That’s why St. Paul will never be what it could be.
@Swiftee – wow! what did they do with all the colored people?
mnbubba, if you can believe the vote tallies, they all moved to Ohio.
swiftee how dare you point out that private sector investments are 1000% better than the government’s! You’ll certainly get your comeuppance, peasant!
I have been to Greenville and it is an awesome city! Their children’s museum make ours look like a waste transfer station!
One more bit of St Paul fun for the next few years: http://www.tcmrm.org
But the owner of Bandana Square wants us gone and isn’t going to renew our lease when it expires (I believe in 2015 or 2016). Kinda sucks, we’ve been there (a most appropriately decorated host location, I might add) since 1987. Lots of history there.
I HIGHLY doubt we are going to move into a space located in Mpls or St Paul proper. TCMRM is a non-profit museum, and without the currently favored politically correct subject matter, associations and affiliations, it’s really hard to get funding of any kind.
But hey, bring your kids/grandkids!
</shameless plug>
Oh, and Adrian, the whole point of anyone from government using the term “investment” when talking about government spending, is simply redefining the term of taxation, to make it more palatable for the low-information voting public.
Investing is good!
BTW, who started relabeling government spending as “investing/investment”? I sure as hell never heard that term used in that context until P-bo assumed his position.
You got it Bill, the very reason for the quotation marks in my use of the term. Government doesn’t invest any more than it creates economic prosperity or jobs.
Employment in a government job would be derived from necessity, much like a business. But if that necessity is driven simply to provide employment (or as payback for political favor) the cost for that is consumed from the private sector economy and therfore generates zero, or often, negative true economic growth.
Private sector investment, in the true sense of the term, creates a return for one/those that invest. Government “investment” takes from those that “invest” (the taxpayer) and returns zero or negative…so it essentially negates the definition of the term itself.
Low information voters need to be educated that when an elected official (or those seeking elected office) uses the term investment…they are, for all intents and purposes, lying.
Consider this: Democrats (as well as some RINOS) have a vast majority of acedemia and the media on their side, with the addition of voter fraud and general election corrution (buying votes)…and we still manage to win a few.