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.
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6 comments:
That's my district and I don't think that everything is right but I never heard that there was going to be a meeting.
It is a shame that you didn’t get the word. I don’t know what outreach was done, but I know that even the best can be unpredictable.
I know that in my district we have done a variety of things – press releases, flyers, bulk mailings, web page announcements, articles in the East Side Review [or in a previous era, the Eastsider], employing an informal network of social and religious entities – basically whatever can be done with a limited budget and the results have been varied with attendance ranging from 50 to 200.
Controversial issues or people can increase attendance at a meeting like this, of course. The most recent example would be the 2006 West Side Citizens Organization’s annual meeting when over 600 were there as participants, attendance being driven by the controversy over Jerry Trooien’s Bridges project.
Problems involved in getting the word out on these meetings is why I am willing to post them here so that if any of the dozen or so who look here might be involved that they know of it. There are so many meetings going on all over the city that I cannot follow them all, but I figure that District Council annual meetings/elections cannot number more than seventeen per year and people who get to them are usually made aware of the other things in their districts.
saw your blog when i was searching my family name. i notice in the text that del monte's bar was demolished for road improvements. i was there in 1966 (i think). dutchy del monte was my uncle. a very colourful caracter and he died way too young. the bar was sold after he died but i think that my aunt held the mortgage. she passed away a few years ago. not mutch left of the delmontes in st paul, unfortunately.
interesting to find out that the bar is gone.
mark mdm(at)personainternet.com
saw your blog when i was searching my family name. i notice in the text that del monte's bar was demolished for road improvements. i was there in 1966 (i think). dutchy del monte was my uncle. a very colourful caracter and he died way too young. the bar was sold after he died but i think that my aunt held the mortgage. she passed away a few years ago. not mutch left of the delmontes in st paul, unfortunately.
interesting to find out that the bar is gone.
mark mdm(at)personainternet.com
Most of us often learn late or never about things that have happened to people or places which our lives have intersected with at some time or another. I am glad that this forum was of help to you.
I never knew your uncle, just his establishment, but your memory seems to click with what I have heard old Rice Street people say.
The bar did go through some dubious incarnations after it was Del Monte's and had been empty for a year or so before it was razed.
Tin Cup's was catercorner and it just closed in the last weeks. "Tin Cup" Tschida passed away several years ago. That building still stands and I do not know its future. but at one time the two men and their establishments anchored a busy corner and helped give Rice Street a lot of its identity.
[The two men obviously must have known each other, but I have no way of knowing whether they like, respected, or detested each other, so I apologize if I have stepped on any toes putting the two of them together.]
RS
thanks for the information. i will always have a faint memory of the time i was at the bar and in st. paul. dutchy has 3 grandchildren that should be in the area. you never know, i may be back some dAY.
MARK
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