It’s Good To Be King

As this is written, Saint Paul is getting around the plowing non-emergency streets. Sort of. Tonight and tomorrow will be the big nights for clearing Friday and Saturday’s fairly significant snowfall.

Guess who didn’t have to wait?

Mayor Carter.

And Public Works director and former City Council boss-lady Kathy Lantry:

But the city’s plows got everyone in the area – right?

Please. It’s Saint Paul – AKA “Animal Town”. And it appears some animals may just be a little more equal than others:

So that’s why property taxes are rising – to make sure our ruling class gets the level of service to which it’s accustomed.

19 thoughts on “It’s Good To Be King

  1. Meh.  This fails as guffaw snark humor because its a triviality articulated inaccurately and incoherently as far as St. Paul goes.

    Lantry doesn’t compose the plow routes.  Whoever does, doesn’t get Lantry’s instruction to do Lantry and Carter first such that this might be true. They just do that on their own.

    If city govt had its way they wouldn’t spend a dime on plowing.

    The property tax increases are earmarked for social engineering, not plowing.

  2. Ha! Funny that this comes up today.

    Had an appointment over by University and Marion streets. I realized I passed my address, so turned on Western and went around the block on Sherburne, snow packed with plenty of dips. What does St. Paul have against Hmong people? Where is Dai Thao? I guess the businesses over there haven’t paid him enough protection money to get their streets cleared.

  3. Those of us with long memories recall that former Mayor Chris Coleman appointed former council member Kathy Lantry as Public Works Director in 2015 and set as her first priority, to fix the problem with snow plowing. So yes, she does determine the plow routes, and timing, and budget.

    As to the mayor’s house and her house, okay, problem solved. As to the rest of us, meet the new boss . . . .

  4. Its a rock solid bet that one of Lantry’s underlings does the plow routes rather than Lantry herself, and that Lantry’s / Carter’s neighborhoods being done first is a suck-up done by said employee rather than a demand of Lantry herself.

  5. Interesting how rock solid sure you are. Do you have any evidence to the contrary? Government leaders taking advantage of their positions is just as plausible.

  6. Oh, I need evidence to falsify the claim made without evidence that Lantry has her street done first?

    Lantry is a political executive who has no competence to compose a snow plowing route for the city. The proper guess then is, she doesn’t.

    That’s not to say things don’t get done to benefit these people.

  7. Oh, I need evidence to falsify the claim made without evidence that Lantry has her street done first?

    So your rock solid assertions are just as flimsy as the originals. Noted.

  8. ” . . . without evidence . . . .”

    Uh, John? Take a look at the photo, then swing through my neighborhood near Como Park, then tell me who got plowed out first.

  9. Joe whether she got plowed out first is not at issue. Its whether she set up the route to plow herself out first.

    Where does she live? How do we know its not perfectly logical her street gets plowed out early because its fairly arterial as far as SP streets go?

    My beef is, the whole thing is a crap observation. What about the part where Mitch assumes property taxes keep going up so that St. Paul’s 20 most important aparatcheks can have their snow plowing done first… You want to nit pick me on my rejection of that that JDM / Joe? Demand that I provide evidence?

  10. Oh, I see. I misunderstood your comment, John. You are suggesting that even if the Public Works director got plowed out first, it’s not because she drew up the plow routes but because some underling did it to curry favor.

    Possible. Despite the controversy in 2015, the study in 2016, the two-year long department re-organization, the internal research on reducing school bus delays and complaint response times, and the U of M study on alley plowing. Maybe some truck driver took it upon himself to drive clear across town to do her a favor, rather than plow his assigned route at his assigned time. Could be.

  11. If you can make the observation that a driver went out of their way and strayed from street assignment to do it, then that’s persuasive.

  12. With Lantry we’re apparently talking about a very small jaunt of a street right off Upper Afton Rd in Battle Creek. Upper Afton would certainly get plowed immediately. I dont know that its right to guess that this little side street would linger days more rather than get done when Upper Afton there is getting done

  13. John, it could be just a coincidence that the mayor’s residence got plowed out first, but given big city politics….nope, not buying it.

    Glad to live in small towns where even the middle and lower classes get the streets plowed. It is strange to me that in the big city, where the distances between homes and the amount to be plowed is far less, that side streets don’t get the treatment they get in places like Mantorville and Waseca. Getting people to work without car accidents pays for itself in a hurry, if that’s what the city council and mayor think is important.

    But obviously, they don’t.

  14. Getting people to work without car accidents pays for itself in a hurry, if that’s what the city council and mayor think is important.

    Especially with that hill on the North-South “main street” in Mantorville.

  15. This is why big cities are toxic: the lack of personal relations with the people who govern you. In a small town, the mayor would have his street plowed last, or face the personal wrath of any citizen whose street was plowed after the mayor’s street was plowed. Democrats are in love with big cities, they can’t see how they strain and fracture human relations.
    Big cities exist for economic reasons. All of the good things that we associate with big city life really have nothing to do with the reason that they exist.

  16. Funny, after 30 years of living in the same home, St. Paul seems to have forgotten the 2 block long stretch of the street which I live on. During the Thanksgiving official snow emergency, I noted that parallel streets to mine had been plowed, but at 4:30 in the afternoon mine had not and no plows seemed to be in the area any more. I called STP public works to note this, and the plow finally got to our two blocks at 12:30am. Now with the “voluntary” plowing that went on, there was no evidence that a plow went down the street. The following day, you could see that a plow had gone down the e-w street. So St. Paul seems to have messed up what was once a working route.

  17. JDM: absolutely. Even better is that because everyone knows the mayor, and because everyone knows the police, there’s rarely if ever a speed trap at the bottom of that hill, even though the police station is right there, and it’s a place where you really have to mind your business to avoid speeding.

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