{"id":852,"date":"2007-05-24T12:20:32","date_gmt":"2007-05-24T18:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/05\/24\/38-months\/"},"modified":"2007-05-24T12:39:42","modified_gmt":"2007-05-24T18:39:42","slug":"38-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=852","title":{"rendered":"38 Quarters"},"content":{"rendered":"

That’s how long it’s been since the Highland Park District Council filed its payroll taxes with the IRS or the State of Minnesota.\u00a0 496 weeks, give or take a few.\u00a0 Nine and a half years.<\/p>\n

Ten years.<\/p>\n

That’s how long it’s been since the Highland District Council has been audited.<\/p>\n

$33,000 to $37,000.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s how much the Council may owe to the IRS and the state of Minnesota in unpaid payroll tax withholding and penalties.<\/p>\n

I attended the Highland Park Community Council meeting last night.\u00a0 It was an information-only meeting, intended primarily to announce the extent (as far as is known) of the Highland Community Council’s financial problems.<\/p>\n

For those of you who don’t live in Saint Paul – the District (or Neighborhood) councils are non-profit organizations that coordinate and administer community improvement plans, among other things.\u00a0 They act as a de facto <\/em>level of government; depending on the people and the neighborhoods involved, as a combination of project administrator, ward-heeler support group, chamber of commerce, complaint clearinghouse, influence mart and cash conduit.\u00a0 They are the outlet for idealists, career non-profiteers, busybodies, and concerned citizens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Highland Park Council has been the subject of much caterwauling<\/a> among Saint Paul’s political establishment since neighborhood Republicans organized themselves enough to get two local GOP activists, Bill Poulos and Georgia Dietz, elected President and Vice President last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After Poulos called the meeting to order, the first – and really only – order of business was the treasurer’s report.\u00a0 The bad news took a solid 45 minutes; there really wasn’t any good news.\u00a0 The council – as in, the treasurer and volunteers from the board – are still trying to sort out the mess left by a full-time paid “organizer” who apparently wasn’t much for “organizing” paperwork.\u00a0 The treasurer commented that all of the Council’s financial records were piled into boxes and scattered over hell and half an acre.<\/p>\n

The board – twenty members (President, veep, secretary and treasurer, two at-large members, twelve “grid” representatives and one each from the city’s Housing Resource Administration and the West End Business Association) – asked a whole lot of questions about the status and process of the “investigation”, the path forward, and – most interestingly…:<\/p>\n