So How Do Liberal Cities Get The Way They Are?

In Saint Paul, on top of the feds, the state, the county and the city, we have a de facto fifth level of government, the “Community Council”.   They’re not technically “government”, but they administer much of the city’s planning agenda, and serve as a group of ready labor for cajoling, shaming and bludgeoning neighborhood businesses into line.

Their boards are “elected”, but the elections are kept a fairly closely guarded secret to avoid any dissenting voices joining.  They are essentially training grounds, and sometimes salaries, for the DFL farm club in Saint Paul.

And some of them go through money they don’t have like it’s going out of style.

The Pioneer Press is covering the ongoing collapse of the Dayton’s Bluff Community Councijl, on the lower East Side.   In the report – you can read it here – you can see a lot of the hallmarks of DFL control writ small; a paid administrator with big ambitions and dubious command of finance; a “cultural director” with a mutual-back-scratching arrangement with the council, and a board elected by a neighborhood that bleeds blue and wouldn’t know what “dissent” is in a one party town.

The results?  Among many others (and you should read the whole thing):

In an interview, Abbott-Foster acknowledged that the council’s 2017 proposed budget was about $470,000 — and they’ll likely only pull in $300,000.

“It was probably a crazy budget proposal. But every year we’d gone up. That was on trajectory,” she added, noting the 2016 actual budget was in the $400,000 range.

She said her own salary was $83,000.

“When I started we were on a $70,000 budget. And each year I was there, we increased the budget by $70,000,” she said.

She blamed the shortfall on several factors: two regular funders, including the St. Paul Foundation, pulled out this year. Their radio station didn’t get any significant underwriting.

DFL governnance:  cover the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves.

 

7 thoughts on “So How Do Liberal Cities Get The Way They Are?

  1. My God…that is what it looks like when a circus train goes off the rails.

    That’s the kind of shit show Coleman has been using taxes and state aid money to backfill.

    I’d blame the city council and the mayor. Ultimately those are the assholes that dole out bales of cash to feckless moonbats.

    Where is the outrage, Mitch?

  2. Highland Villager headline was St. Paul proposed budget was like 563 million. For a city of about 300,000. $1,800 of government spending (and taxing) for every man, woman and child in the city.

  3. This happened ten years ago or so with the Highland District Council. Too many feel good ideas and not enough of running the books.

  4. Read the article. Looks like there was financially shady stuff going on. It seems that they overspent & then started playing games with accounts to cover expenses, this spooked funders & *poof*, they are OOB.

  5. $83K salary to run a “council” with a budget of only $300K? I was head of a non-profit a while back. I had a zero salary and the organization had a budget of about $270K.

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