Happy Easter to my Orthodox friends

Happy, Joyous Easter! The Savior is risen! He is truly risen!

Moving on: Payne Phalen District Five Planning Council -- In with the old, In with the new

Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council’s annual meeting was held this evening in the cafeteria of John A. Johnson Elementary School.

There were approximately seventy qualified voters at the meeting was held to elect ten directors to two-year terms and to consider three proposed amendments to the bylaws [all submitted by Eric Mitchell and placed on the meeting agenda by direction of the Board].

The District Council honored its Honor Roll nominees and other volunteers and heard greetings from City Councilmembers Dan Bostrom and Lee Helgen and County Commissioners Jim McDonough and Janice Rettman. Councilmember Bostrom noted the presence of former Councilmember Roberta Megard in the audience. Ms. Megard has been observing district meetings for the League of Women Voters.

President Kapaun summed up the accomplishments of the last year and Treasurer Janice Lafloe reported on the finances, noting the excellent audit report recently delivered for 2006 and 2007.

Eleven candidates were nominated for the ten seats. The election was held peacefully and fairly. I do not agree with the results in their entirety, but that happens in a democracy.

The two officers whose terms were up, President Kapaun and Treasurer Lafloe, were reelected. Former President Eric Mitchell and land use chairperson/ radio personality A. L. Brown, both of whom had been serving on the Executive Committee, declined to seek reelection.

Former Director and former School Board member Al Oertwig was probably the best-known of the newly elected Directors. [When I get a complete list of names with correct spelling, I’ll append them.]

The bylaw proposal to rename the organization was defeated. It seemed to me that there was some sentiment to changing the name, if not to “Payne/Phalen Community Council” to something similar which removes the focus from the district number, but that concerns over the cost and legal complications of the name change deterred the electorate.

The amendment to allow Directors to resign by submitting a letter of resignation was approved.

The third amendment, which would have removed a Director if a number equal to 70% of the voters at the last annual meeting signed a petition for removal, was withdrawn at Mr. Mitchell’s request.

As District Council annual meetings go, there was probably nothing especially exciting about this one, but it was another fine example of our Citizen Participation system in action. The next year or two will tell us if the right choices were made.

ADDENDUM: May 3, 2008

Also elected, in addition to those named above was David Syers who kept the seat to which he was appointed last year and new members Brian Cooper, Cheryl Fiksdal, Laurie Krivitz, Jerry Livesay, Nieeta Presley, and Kerry Stone.

Who's watching the store? OR A Bridge between them?

I had never heard of 24-hour, no-frills, unstaffed health clubs before this morning. I suppose I can see possible problems. After all, seeing possible problems is something I seem to have a knack for. And, according to at least one Administrative Law Judge, present city code does require that staff be on premises at all times.

If I read this morning’s newspaper story correctly, David Thune, current and past councilmember from City Council District [often called “Ward”] Two is against them and wants the law to stay the way the ALJ is interpreting it. I am surmising that if the ALJ opinion is not upheld that he would want an ordinance adopted to require that they be staffed whenever they are open.

Another former councilmember from that same district, Mayor Coleman the Second, is quoted in the DPP as saying, "It can't be OK everywhere else and be somehow more risky in St. [sic] Paul." [Note to the Mayor’s fans, of whom there must be some: “Sic” is inserted because that is what is done here at CCM when we find the name of our city unnecessarily abbreviated. However, I suspect that His Honor made the statement orally and it is just the paper’s defective, penny-pinching style sheet which instituted the abbreviation. So save the letters, or at least send them on other things.]

This is quite a choice, having to choose between these two men, who usually seem to only be separated by the High Bridge.

It has been traditional in our culture to recognize that problems are possible in a lot of businesses and to adopt codes to protect the public from unscrupulous or incompetent operators. We license, charter, or regulate restaurants and bars, building contractors, motor vehicles and drivers, pawn shops, utilities, and scores of other things.

Sometimes [probably most of the time] we regulate well or at least “pretty good”. Other times we fail. And sometimes we forget why we license and legislate or enforce from outdated models.

Old timers may remember [probably 25 or 30 years ago] when Sister Rosalind wanted to open her first massage center in the city. She had to face a lot of legislative hostility because we had several places which had been known as “massage parlors” in town which had been serving as fronts for prostitution and for whom the city had adopted some drastic regulations. [Regulations don’t always work as they are intended. By the time Sister Rosalind was applying for her licenses, all or almost all of the former “massage parlors” had quit offering massages and were no longer affected by them. They were still open, just weren’t “massage parlors” anymore.]

I sometimes have wondered if her fight might have been too difficult to pursue had she not been a middle-aged Catholic nun, but she got changes made after telling our city leaders that she resented the proposition that she and her employees were in the prostitution business and were entitled for more dignified treatment. Ordinances were altered, but they still worked from the anti-prostitution perspective for several more years, including requiring that masseur/masseuse licenses be issued by the City Council and that the licensee’s name be on the City Council agenda and minutes.

And I would be remiss if I forget to mention that having regulations guarantees the public that they will be enforced. For one thing, government bureaucrats seem to find it easier to hassle those with licenses than those who operate without them. Any licensed taxicab driver or owner in our city knows that

Thune says that the new style health clubs present a neighborhood issue and threatens to enlist the support of neighborhood organizations, especially District Councils. Maybe he will indeed get such help, but I suspect that while they may give him some lip service that most neighborhood organizations are already so deeply committed to fighting more obvious crime and the decay in our housing situations and developing stable business and social environments to jump on that bandwagon really hard.

NOTICE: District Council annual meeting approaching. [D5, 4/22/08]

Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council’s annual meeting is April 22 at John A. Johnson Elementary School [740 York].

Ten Directors will be elected and three bylaws amendments considered.

Details are at PaynePhalen.org.

District 6 Planning Council annual meeting report

I just attended the District 6 Planning Council’s annual meeting held this evening at St. Bernard’s Social Hall. I am willing to announce any district’s annual meeting about a week ahead, but I had learned about this one just this afternoon.

I have been to such meetings in my own and other districts before, including all of my own since 1981, and this was about the tamest I have ever seen.

By my count there were a little over thirty people there, but I don’t know how many were qualified meeting participants. I don’t think it was announced. [Even with so few there the acoustics were not great and there was no sound system and I do have some hearing problem, so I know I did not catch everything.]

The business portion of the meeting went smoothly. A few introductions were made, the first round of elections was held [by subdistricts called “precincts” although they all stayed together in one body], Jane McClure gave a very good presentation on city and North End history, the second round of elections was held [for at-large seats] and Councilmember Helgen and Commissioner Rettman spoke. The Commissioner tried to rationalize her vote for the sales tax for transit. I am not certain that I follow her, but her record on protecting taxpayers in the past is excellent and maybe I should give her the benefit of the doubt.

It appears that everybody there who wanted a Board seat got one through one of the two methods. One [and maybe two] of the new Directors are from the Karen community.

Based on questions and comments raised it seems that vacant housing and mortgage foreclosures are of great concern.

Whenever I go to a district’s annual meeting and things are that calm I wonder if it is because they are doing things so well that nobody wants to make a fuss or that they are so irrelevant that nobody cares. I am inclined to give them a break and think the first, but if anybody out there from the North End has a comment, there is a comment place below.

Also, I learned from a conversation before the meeting that the former Dutch Del Monte’s bar site and the barber shop behind it which were leveled last week were taken down for intersection improvements, apparently something similar to what happened two miles east at Arcade and Maryland a few years ago.

Norm Coleman disappointed by Central Corridor veto, Pawlenty backpedaling?

Please make no mistake. I did not approve of Pawlenty’s massive, wholesale quantity, hostile anti-urban line item vetoes made so vindictively Monday. The man is evil and an enemy of the city! [Actually, it is not my role to proclaim him any more evil than we all are, but he brings about evil deeds. And he may not be any more an enemy of the city than other suburbanites, but he is in a position to make this more manifest.]

I did note the veto of Central Corridor rail funding and quoted Representative Hausman as saying that the veto had single-handily killed the boondoggle [mournful for her, joyful for those of us who have been trying to save our city and University Avenue].

Although, I had suggested that there might be hyperbole involved, it was a time for hope. Sometimes even bad people can do good things for bad reasons.

Today we learn in an AP story carried by the DPP that Norm is not happy about this veto of a boondoggle he has supported for 20 years, but the official gubernatorial spokesperson Brian McClung says that Pawlenty still has the “utmost respect” for our senior Senator.

And it reports that on his radio show this morning that Pawlenty said about the project, “It may come back, we'll see,"

Somehow, it just won’t die.

Tutu the Fifth Time

We gave considerable attention in October to the brouhaha about Archbishop Tutu and St. Thomas [the college, not the saint].

So it would seem in order to note that the anticipated visit from the South African bishop/activist/Nobel laureate is upon us.

Details of the Archbishop’s visit are available in a MinnPost story posted this morning.

I am sure that even those of us who will not be seeing him will wish our distinguished visitor welcome.

Previous posts:

Tutu the Fourth Time [10/10/08]

Tutu the Thrid Time [10/9/07]

Congrats, A L Brown AND Tutu the Second Time [10/7/07]

Welcome to Minnesota?? [Nobel Division] [10/5/07]

Boats coming back

The river made this city.

Now that our railroad and trucking industries have largely forgotten us and moved pretty much anything they can away, we sometimes forget that the river [or more accurately the boats that moved upon it] made our city and helped establish the city as a major transportation hub.

Most years this gets little notice, but the first towboat with barges is expected today and we need every sign of spring we can get this year. Thanks to global warming or something this year’s date will be a record late date, breaking the previous record by four days and the average by almost three weeks.

And we need all the vernal thoughts we can get right now.

Grounds for Hope on Central Corridor?

Governor Pawlenty has vetoed $70,000,000 for Central Corridor funding,

Representative Alice Hausman is quoted as saying,

"In my opinion the governor single-handedly killed the central corridor,"

[from Minnesota Daily:]


I don’t know enough to know if this will actually kill the train or not. There may be some hyperbole here or it may be just that somehow this will go through anyway with costs being shifted to local taxpayers.

But we can hope.

It would be overly simple to note that His Excellency is from Eagan and that people who live in Eagan and other suburbs live in those places because they are the enemies of city people and that Governor Plenty’s dislike of us combined with the absence of any Republicans in our city’s legislative delegation does not make it the easiest to obtain any funding for our interests, so I will likely be putting more up about the governor’s line-item vetoes announced today most of the news does sound like bad news to city people, but I want to examine things more first.

Quote of the Day – April 4, 2008

"Better late than never." Rev. Jesse Jackson, on John McCain’s admission that he was wrong to vote against the Martin Luther King holiday when in the House of Representatives in 1983.

[Today is the fortieth anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King, but you have probably already learned that.]

Flak for Thune? An Apology?

Dave Thune has been getting some flak for stating that downtown residents don’t want 8.000 “puking Republican lobbyists in the streets at four in the morning.” [A wise guy would then ask what time they wanted them puking, but there is no wisdom here, is there?]

Even though his record indicates that Thune does not ever deserve the benefit of a doubt, it might not be too far out of line to be at least a little understanding on this one. I doubt if the people who live downtown [or in any other of our city’s neighborhoods] want anybody puking downtown, regardless of occupation or political affiliation. But somehow, Senator Sandra Pappas thought it necessary to apologize for his comment on the floor or the Minnesota Senate.

Well, Thune is one of her constituents, but doesn’t this take constituent services a bit far?

But it seems to me that the apology is excessive and unnecessary. After all, Senators are relatively well aware of political processes and the speech they entail and should be able to give the councilmember’s comments a proper perspective. And although to many of us outsiders, they both seem to be part of the flaky, intolerant left, there must be more than the High Bridge separating Pappas from Thune.

And the Boy Wonder noted that Saint Paul is not Las Vegas. No, it is not. You can still smoke there.

Which brings us to the real difference: The real drinking for the cigars, the lobbyists and power players, will not be in our saloons and bars nor in the saloons and bars of Mpls. or Bloomington or anyplace else in our area. That action will be moved to suites and rooms where the cigars can do what gives them their name.

And the hanging, unanswered question would be, “Why wouldn’t we take this step for other conventions and groups that use our city?” After all, we wouldn’t want people to think that attorneys, lawyers, clergypeople, hardware dealers, ice hockey fans, dentists, baton twirlers [at least their over-21 chaperones], and others to be denied the amenities that we give the Republicans.

Previous post: You might want to drink late too [3/28/08]

Related articles: [from Minnesota Monitor]: Pappas apologizes for Thune's 'puking Republicans' remark

RNC: St. Paul says 'no' to 4 a.m. bar close

Semianniversary

Today marks six months since the first post on this blog. [Not enough for a birthday cake, but maybe it warrants a piece of pie, so and get yourself one if you wish -- at your own expense of course since I am cheap.]

I have posted with about the frequency I had thought I would, but have not stuck to local topics as much as I had figured on. [Had you suggested that I would find it handy to have a label for “Marty Seifert” I probably would not have agreed.]

A few people have added comments, some often. I don’t think I actually know most of them, but the way comments are taken provides for enough anonymity that I really cannot tell.

I have run into several people around town who tell me that they look at the site but have never commented. I understand. I almost never comment on anybody else’s site myself, although I do make occasional comments on Saint Paul Issues Forum.

I assume that this forum has served some positive role in promoting civil discourse on public issues, but certainly cannot say that the role has been large.

Feel free to use the comment space for this post to give general feedback on Capitol City Musings.

RS