Well, let's see if they pick this one up

I am not trying to be obsessed with death or the dead, but the paid and news obituaries we read do tell us a lot about ourselves, where we have been and where we are going, AND what a medium does or does not do with the news tells us a lot about the medium.

That was the motive behind yesterday’s post [“Who watches the news at the newspapers?”] was not so much to build up Dr. Sommerdorf as to question who at the DPP or the Mpls. paper has enough sense of history to remember people from more than a year or two ago.

Today I notice a paid DPP obit for Robert Sprafka, one of the old city councilmembers of a previous generation who was put by the wayside when the DFL took control of the city’s government structure in 1972. He later headed the Port Authority.

Let’s see if anybody picks up on this.

New business on Dayton's Bluff

It appears that Baldinger Bakery will be leaving the West Side and that Health East’s ambulance depot will be leaving the North End. Both will be moving to Dayton’s Bluff, the latter to part of the Minnesota Mining site and the former just east of it. I assume that the affected Dayton’s Bluff neighbors will be receiving more information and given a chance to address whatever concerns they may have.

Both moves will be heralded by all the right people as great steps forward in the economic development of our city. We will hear the gooey comments from Mayor Coleman the Second and Council President Lantry [into whose ward the moves are being made] and business association types. Yet both are just moving within the city, not into it.

I don’t know the details of either move, but on the surface the Health East one certainly seems to make sense. Storing ambulances indoors in Minnesota winters makes more sense than keeping them outdoors.

It seems reasonable to think that both moves indicate companies who are willing to make a long-term investment in the city and that has to be good. But the Port Authority and other development agencies need to start working with the North End and West Side communities to fill up the holes being created in their territories.

And all of us will have to watch what happens.

[Ironically, old timers will remember that until the mid 1980s that Health East had a hospital just a few blocks from where they used to operate a hospital. There’s a story there.]

Who watches the news at the newspapers?

Dr. Vernon Sommerdorf died on October 19. The paid obit in the newspaper mentions his age [88] and tells about much of his life and accomplishments – his navy service, medical career [including his Payne Avenue practice and work at Mounds Park Hospital], his community service including both his extensive work with foster children and his church work.

The paid obit notice did not note Dr. Sommerdorf’s six years [1967-73] of service representing local districts in the Minnesota House of Representatives. Of course, what is included is the family’s choice.

I met the Dr. Sommerdorf [he did some lecturing on public health at a class I took in college and he appeared at and hosted some political events] but I never knew him and this article is not really a RIP about him. It is instead an indictment of the inability of the local rag to recognize this as a news story.

I am being ciritical primarily of the local rag, but the Star[Journal- and] Tribune missed it too. Even if Dr. Sommerdorf’s career as mentioned in the obit [and I have to concede that sometimes the family-paid obits polish the resumes once in a while] it would seem that if the papers hired folks who know local history they would think it noteworthy that somebody who had represented the city at the Capitol had passed on.

And people wonder why newspaper sales are declining.


(A link to the DPP obit)

A song about our Supermayor

I discovered this link while looking for something else, but I suspect that may Capitol City Musings readers might appreciate this. It is from the days when Charles Patrick McCarty was our mayor, a song sung by Andy Roberts [and I have to admit that I do not know who he is/was] and the Galivanteers, the house band at Gallivan’s.

If you are old enough you can flash back to those wonderful days when a Lincoln Continental with flashing lights in the grille and license plate “4CM 100” roamed our city.

County Commissioner pay increases?

The Ramsey County Charter Commission will hold a hearing on November 2 [aka Election Eve] in City Council/ County Commission chambers in the City Hall/ Court House [6:30 p.m.] regarding public participation via referendum on the amount County Commissioners are to be paid.

There are two proposals. Both assume pay increases for commissioners. Apparently, nobody thinks that a pay decrease is in order.

The present salary is $82,400 per year. Let me suggest that our commissioners are already well paid. While it is true that they are indeed responsible for overseeing the budgeting and expenditures of large quantities of public moneys, that in itself does not seem to warrant a salary so large. How to spend much of the money is predetermined before the county receives it.

I am not trying to take an anti-tax position simply because I don’t like taxes. Actually, I would favor putting a little more money for the part of the second floor the commissioners inhabit. Watch a County Commission meeting, either in person [if you can get through the security at Lord Fletcher’s Castle] or on cable television. The commissioners seem way too dependent on what the staff [which is responsible to others and often operates from different agenda] can tell them and not enough on their own independent sources of information.

Why not take the money we might be willing to spend on commissioner pay increases and use it for development of independent staffs for the commissioners?

Just an idea.

Following the muser's lead on a dog park

It is nice knowing that once in a while an idea suggested here actually gets some consideration.

In a post dated 1/6/08 I suggested that the city might wish to “think outside the box” to alleviate some of its dog park shortage. [While I cannot agree with what some of the most rabid dog park enthusiasts say, that dogs deserve equal consideration with children in determining park policy, it is clear that there is a shortage of such facilities.] Arlington/Arkwright is a nice place, I guess, for dog lovers who want to use it [and I am well aware that some dog lovers do not cotton to the idea of dog parks – that’s why we in the neighborhood had to negotiate between the two factions when that park was established], but Arlington/Arkwright is dying from too much love.

Noting that Stillwater was considering using a location it owned in Wisconsin, I suggested that extra-container cogitation might suggest such a use for Lilydale Park.

An article by Dave Orrick in yesterday’s paper that consideration is being given to a dog park in Lilydale [The map the DPP used yesterday is vague about whether the site is indeed in Lilydale. It also does mislabels the river running by the park. It is a shame when the local rag does not even know what the Mississippi River is.] The Parks Commission has approved it and that the City Council will be considering the matter Wednesday.

It kind of makes me feel good, not only because I can say the idea started here, but because we really need another dog park available to our city’s dog-owning residents.

More thoughts on IRV

I have written before about Instant Runoff Voting [IRV] before. I am still uncertain what my final position will be, but I have been leaning against it for our local elections. Last year showed that many of us are confused about how to vote on our simple first-choice-only ballots.

I tend to support allowing open ballot access which allows a candidate to list all the parties endorsing him/her. If a candidate had a majority in the September primary, he/she would be declared elected. If no candidate had a majority, the top two candidates would face each other in November. Candidates and parties eliminated in September would be out of it.

However, that is not what we are being offered for consideration this year.

Now Joe Soucheray who has been railing against IRV for a while notes that his allies include Chuck Repke and Dave Thune. That gives me a bit of a chuckle, but it should only be momentary. Soucheray mistakenly thinks that IRV is a great leftist conspiracy, so having them as allies seems to arouse him a bit.

But there really is no reason to think that IRV will aid left more than right. It just depends on who the candidates are and who the voters are. Sometimes in some jurisdictions it will work wonders for the left, other times in other places it could work wonders for the right, and in many places many times it will work one way in the election for one office while working the other way in the election for a different office. In some racially divided areas it would likely mean that candidate[s] of the less preferred race[s] are rated last by those of differing race[s].

Soucheray mentions a site which he attributes to Mr. Repke. I checked the site out and watched the videos there. I cannot agree that I follow them, because in an A-B-C election not everybody who chooses C will rank A and B in the same way, nor will all who choose A rank B and C the same way, and so on. While there may be cases in which the system seems to skew things incorrectly and I imagine that candidates and parties from all sides will check out the possibilities, it will be hard to pull those shenanigans. [If we really want to clean up our elections from shenanigans we might wish to address how anybody regardless of party can vote in any party’s primary in the even-year general elections.]

But it does seem likely that keeping all the candidates in the running until the last day will in many cases stifle meaningful debate and it does seem that many people who need enfranchisement the most will avoid voting because they cannot understand the process or will cast invalid ballots.

And I also think we would be better off deciding AFTER Minneapolis had had an IRV election or two under its belt.

My previous posts on IRV. link, link, link

RIP: Capitol City Cacophony?

When I left my job with District 2 Community Council in 1991 I decided to reclaim those first amendment rights which I had surrendered for my employment. So I started an irregularly published newsletter which I labeled Capitol City Cacophony. It was a one-man project using [at first] publishing software fit for a Commodore 64 which I personally financed, printed, and distributed to people who might have an interest in the topic[s] the newsletter was covering.

In 2001 I moved Capitol City Cacophony to a GeoCities web site. It was less expensive but allowed Yahoo to put ads on it. And I lost the ability to control the distribution.

Capitol City Cacophony went fine for a few years, but it seemed as if the software needed to use it kept becoming more averse to my computer and its dialup modem, so I replaced it with Capitol City Musings on Blogspot.

Yahoo will be eliminating all GeoCities sites in the next few days. While I have done little to maintain the site, there is still some stuff on the Capitol City Cacophony pages and it will be gone.

Some of the material will likely reappear here or in Ray’s Leaky Pen or someplace else, but I am not sure where or when. Most of the Jefferson Hill stuff has never made it even to CCC, but I do hope to have a lot of Jefferson Hill content up somewhere sometime.

If anybody wishes to see CCC content you might wish to do so this week.

Two years of Capitol City Musings

Today is the second anniversary of my first posting here at Capitol City Musings. I have posted at an average very close to one every other day and received a non-SPAM, usable comment on the average of one every three days, although the number seems to have dropped off quite a bit lately. [I have not had a comment in almost three months.] The first frequent commenter was somebody using the name “Midway Barb” and I have not heard from her in a year.

I have had comments come from some famous [?] people. Dick Tuck wrote me early on and I have heard from one legislator. The “Dick Tuck” who wrote me is likely not the real Dick Tuck. The legislator was verified as legitimate. I even received [with a quickness which amazed me] a stern lecture from somebody more knowledgeable about Roman Catholic procedures [a brother (in the religious sense, I think)] who corrected me on the difference between a feast day and a holy day.

I have done three “treasure hunts” with limited result. D.N. Berg won two, but the winner of the third chose to stay anonymous which gives some kind of message when the only award to the winner is the limited public recognition this forum can give. I might do a fourth this winter.

Recently I have added “The Muser’s shared items” which features my short comments on things for which I am not doing full posts and providing the URL to the article upon which I am commenting. I cannot say that I have heard much about this new feature whether good or ill.

It is good that this was never designed to be one of those places that people just had to visit, because it certainly has not been one. But I still run into people who tell me that they noted and maybe even liked something they saw in CCM. So I guess I will continue this longer. Feel free to continue reading or to tell your friends/enemies of this site and to send me comments as desired. [I really don’t censor much. I have probably deleted no more than half a dozen or so for objectionable – racist in every case, I believe – content and maybe a dozen or two for being SPAM.]

After all, your comments may make year three our best ever.