{"id":1390,"date":"2007-10-04T05:00:23","date_gmt":"2007-10-04T10:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1390"},"modified":"2007-10-04T05:00:23","modified_gmt":"2007-10-04T10:00:23","slug":"park-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1390","title":{"rendered":"Park It"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> for a day.<\/p>\n

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:<\/p>\n

Mischke, responding to the “parking space park” declaration:<\/p>\n

I had to consult a calendar to see if it was actually April 1.<\/p>\n

The mayor’s supposed paean to the city’s parks system might have
\ncaused nothing but head-scatching were it not for the serious threats
\nthat the mayor’s 2008 budget represents to the same parks system, and
\nthe imperial manner with which those threats are being dealt.<\/p>\n

There is widespread disappointment among people who thought Coleman
\nwould be far more receptive than his predecessor to involving
\ncitizens in city decision-making. But that hasn’t proven to be the
\ncase. Three cases in point:<\/p>\n

* There is no contingency plan for the city’s rec centers that are
\nslated to be palmed off on private organizations to operate. If no
\nprivate partners are found to run those rec centers by the end of the
\nyear, they will close. Yet rec center booster clubs, district
\ncouncils and youth sports organizations were blind-sided by the
\nmayor’s budget announcement, and they’re peeved about what they see
\nas the ham-handed, take-it-or-leave-it approach of the
\nadministration. We’ve known for nearly a year about the city’s
\nlooming budget woes, they say. Couldn’t the mayor have brought us
\ninto the loop earlier and given us time to find private partners and
\nexplore possible solutions with them?<\/p>\n

* The off-leash dog park fiasco is another example of what happens
\nwhen the mayor shuns local parks advocates, district councils and
\nyouth sports groups and simply sics Parks and Rec on a “solution” to
\na problem that only a handful of Coleman’s constituents had
\ncomplained to him about: you get bitten on the backside.
\nUnfortunately, parks staff took the teeth marks when it was the mayor
\nwho asked for them.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You should read the whole thing.<\/p>\n

SPicy’s signoff:<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 Let’s all make sure to support those who support the local press.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Which helps (I say, helps<\/em>) make up for that whole “one party town” thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}