{"id":65493,"date":"2017-12-21T11:00:04","date_gmt":"2017-12-21T17:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65493"},"modified":"2017-12-20T05:52:28","modified_gmt":"2017-12-20T11:52:28","slug":"so-how-do-liberal-cities-get-the-way-they-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=65493","title":{"rendered":"So How Do Liberal Cities Get The Way They Are?"},"content":{"rendered":"

In Saint Paul, on top of the feds, the state, the county and the city, we have a\u00a0de facto\u00a0<\/em>fifth level of government, the “Community Council”.\u00a0 \u00a0They’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.<\/p>\n

Their boards are “elected”, but the elections are kept a fairly closely guarded secret to avoid any dissenting voices joining.\u00a0 They are essentially training grounds, and sometimes salaries, for the DFL farm club in Saint Paul.<\/p>\n

And some of them go through money they don’t have like it’s going out of style.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Pioneer Press\u00a0<\/em>is covering the ongoing collapse of the Dayton’s Bluff Community Councijl<\/a>, on the lower East Side.\u00a0 \u00a0In 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.<\/p>\n

The results?\u00a0 Among many others (and you should read the whole thing):<\/p>\n

In an interview, Abbott-Foster acknowledged that the council\u2019s 2017 proposed budget was about $470,000 \u2014 and they\u2019ll likely only pull in $300,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was probably a crazy budget proposal. But every year we\u2019d gone up. That was on trajectory,\u201d she added, noting the 2016 actual budget was in the $400,000 range.<\/p>\n

She said her own salary was $83,000.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I started we were on a $70,000 budget. And each year I was there, we increased the budget by $70,000,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She blamed the shortfall on several factors: two regular funders, including the St. Paul Foundation, pulled out this year. Their radio station didn\u2019t get any significant underwriting.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

DFL governnance:\u00a0 cover the luxuries, and the necessities will take care of themselves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Saint Paul, on top of the feds, the state, the county and the city, we have a\u00a0de facto\u00a0fifth level of government, the “Community Council”.\u00a0 \u00a0They’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. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[320,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mndfl","category-st-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65493","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=65493"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65495,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65493\/revisions\/65495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}