1006 Summit on view

I have not been in the governor’s mansion since 1974 when I was [along with about 80 others] the guest of Wendell Anderson for supper.

I do not know how much it has changed. I do suspect that they no longer have ash trays with special commemorative match books any longer.

But in the spirit of announcing upcoming public events, I should note that the place [located at 1006 Summit, for those who may not know] will be open to free public tours from 1:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. the first three Tuesdays of the next three months.

Photo ID is required for admittance. Somehow I suspect that Marty Seifert must be chuckling.

Trees? We like them, don't we?

Today is Arbor Day. [In this era of artificially moving holidays to specific days of the week, I don’t know why this made-up holiday isn’t held on Saturday, but it doesn’t seem to be.]

I had not intended to mention this, since it really is not particularly local and everybody loves trees, at least until the birds come to the one by where he/she parks his/her car.

But thanks to Joe Kimball of MinnPost I have been made aware of some local happenings which will take the spirit of Arbor Day well into May. The complete list of events can be seen in Mr. Kimball’s post, but it is worth noting that in addition to planting 300 trees in the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary [and isn’t it a bit unnatural for humans to introduce life into a nature sanctuary?], Como Park will receive more than 100 new trees. This seems to be a smart idea after all the natural demolition which took place a couple of years back.

Kimball’s post also notes that volunteers are still needed for this endeavor on Saturday, May 2 and he provides a link for those interested.

The parks cleanup as seen from Phalen Park AND District Council gets award

This morning was the annual Saint Paul Parks cleanup. People gathered at various parks around the city, received bags and instructions and proceeded to remove a lot of things which should not have been where they were. They all merit commendation.

One such gathering point was the Phalen Park picnic pavilion where a few dozen gathered. I do not know how many places had miniature programs before the public disembarked, Phalen Park did.

For those of you from St. Anthony Park or Mac-Groveland who may not be familiar with Phalen Park, the pavilion sits directly south of the statue defaced last year.

Mayor Coleman the Second was there to present the Payne/’Phalen District Council with an award for its work in organizing the community after last year’s vandalism to the statue. The mayor mentioned that he had been in China and discussed the statue with the maker and commended the neighborhood for its good work. Director Kerry Stone accepted the award along with President Ryan Kapaun, Sheldon Schwartz, Al Oertwig, and other directors, staff, and volunteers from the organization. The ceremony was short, to the point, and dignified [considering that all present were dressed as if they were going to a cleanup].

When mayors come to events, they seldom are early and leave as quickly as they can, probably often because there were other places they have had to be immediately before and after the given appearance. However, this time the mayor was there at least half an hour early, talking with people who came by, even this writer. [We agreed that remaining ambulatory was a good thing.]

Anyhow, congratulations to the Payne Phalen Council [for the record, I am a director but was not involved in this project] and thanks to all the volunteers who showed up at all the locations to help keep our city’s parks clean.

[Cf. Scarred statue, 08/10/08]

Phalen Park Crime Meeting

I am much more likely to attend meetings that communities call and have public officials come to than I am those which are called by the authorities [often without checking on what else may be simultaneously happening in the community] for the public to attend. That was not the primary reason that I did not attend last night’s meeting at the Phalen Recreation Center dealing with three recent Phalen Park crimes, but I have to admit that I was not there and am relying on what other have said about the meeting.

I have read the newspaper coverage and saw some of the local television coverage. It looked like a meeting attended by the usual people and quite a few more [Laura Pabst of MS-J&T estimates attendance at 200] . It seems that those present learned that the mayor, councilmember, and police chief are against crime and that the three crimes seem to have no common factor except for geography.

In general, crime is down. The stats are supposed to make us feel more comfortable. Having been the uninjured victim of a statistically rare but violent crime myself [not on the East Side], I do not find this much of an answer. Victims don’t care about the numbers.

I have often questioned what meetings like this accomplish. It’s kind of like the righteous in the world meeting in church, shouting Hallelujahs and thanking the Lord that they aren’t like those people.

But, based on what I have picked up from other sources, there may have been some gains from the meeting. It does appear that some linking of community organizations in crime prevention and neighborhood nuisance work has been accelerated by more people getting together at the same time and place.

Media links:

DPP, MS-J&T, KAAL

Scarred Statue

Last year an ugly statue was placed in Phalen Park, north of the picnic pavilion, east of the amphitheater, and within view of the Karl Neid, jr. bridge. I say ugly. Others disagree. That is well. Art is a subjective thing, And I admit that after seeing the statue in person, I concluded that it was not as ugly as the pictures I had seen would have led me to think.

But even though we don’t all agree on how lovely/ugly the statue is, what can be [and must be] agreed on is that the recent racial vandalism and defacement is clearly ugly.

On Friday the 15^th there will be a community ceremony to demonstrate neighborhood indignation at all that has happened there and to serve as a sort of kickoff to the cleanup of the statue scheduled to begin the next Monday. I doubt if I will be there since I already have booked the time for something else, but I do wish to announce it here for your information/edification.

Earlier post on the Karl Neid, jr. bridge: [10/14/07]

http://ccmusings.blogspot.com/2007/10/bridge-in-phalen-park.html

ADDENDUM [8/12]: I should have put this in the original post, but this morning's DPP has the infomation phrased concisely.

IF YOU GO: 'UNITY CEREMONY'

What: Unity ceremony prompted by a sculpture being defaced with hate graffiti

When: Friday. Viewing of the sculpture begins at 6 p.m., and the ceremony at 7 p.m.

Where: Phalen Park pavilion, St. Paul

Parking: Available at Gustavus Adolphus Lutheran Church at Arcade Street and Larpenteur Avenue. It's a short walk to the park; shuttle bus service will be available.

Rondo Days

This weekend is Rondo Days. This marks the 25^th anniversary of what has become one of the city’s principal festivals.

Rondo Day[s] always hits a special point on my cranium. I never lived there and never saw the street. It was taken out in the late 1950s and I did not get here until the mid 1960s. But I grew up on top of a hill in Cedar Rapids, Iowa where about ten years later the Iowa Highway Commission decided to build what became known as I-380. Like when Minnesota chose Rondo, Iowa chose our place because it provided for a nice, straight road without displacing any people of influence. It has been suggested that where freeways are straight, that they went through poor/working class neighborhoods. I think there is some truth to that.

As far as I know nobody has ever attempted to do any kind of festival for our neighborhood in Iowa. Maybe we didn’t have the organizers. Maybe too many have left the area. Maybe the lack of a central, defining ethnicity which felt displaced have never inspired anybody to try. [There were a lot of people of Czech and Slovak ancestry in the corridor, but there were a lot more elsewhere in the city.]

But I do wish the Rondo folks well every year and trust that everybody involved will have a good and happy festival. I envy their commitment.

County Fair opens today

Well, the Ramsey County Fair starts today, out at the Maplewood fairgrounds. I sometimes wonder if anybody notices or cares. Every few years the subject of ending this event comes up.

If you have comments about the County Fair or this year’s visit there [or a previous year’s] or whether it should keep on, please be free to add a comment here.

North End Community Fireworks Display

This happened all over the city, I assume, but I had the special opportunity of observing part of the North End’s unofficial fireworks display last night. This Fourth of July celebration was going on concurrent to the Taste of Minnesota demonstration. Neighbors on both sides of Rice Street were lighting the sky with an amazing collection glaring rockets and other works of pyrotechnical art. More seemed to come from west of Rice than east, but that is likely because the inhabitants of the condominiums between Jackson and Sylvan south of Magnolia don’t participate much. One of the disadvantages of this kind of varied-site display is that one does not know where the next blast is coming from and misses the upgoing parabola of the display.

And, as far as I can tell, this whole display neither received any public subsidy nor charged admission.

The What Museum of Minnesota?

On Kellogg Boulevard across from the NSP Arena [Save me the comments and emails. I thought it was Xcel also, but when they send me my monthly electrical bill, they say to make checks payable to Northern States Power] and west of the property Ramsey County says it no longer needs even as it tries to find places near the Court House for employees is a big building called a museum, the latest incarnation of the Science Museum of Minnesota which has migrated from on the hill on University Avenue to Tenth Street and to.

It is apparently quite a tourist attraction. Remembering the success of the Titanic exhibit that Norm and his henchman Erich Mische brought to Union Depot, they knew that we in this region did not respect tombs around here and recently correctly extended that premise by capitalizing on on our disrespect for the dead with a show of bodies. And now they are cashing in on pop culture with a Star Wars exhibit.

I haven’t seen this new exhibit. I cannot imagine that I will. I saw the first Star Wars movie, appropriately named Star Wars, in 1977 and I was bored. The two robots seemed too much inspired by Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble and had none of their appeal [and certainly none of the Ralph and Ed from whom the men from Bedrock had been patterned],

Now we are supposed to believe that science fiction is science. When I was in about junior high school way back in the Twentieth Century we were told that science fiction [which was then predicting telephones with pictures and with buttons instead of dials and that we would be moving about with miniature jet engines around our backs by the early days of this century] and science were different things.

Well, our telephones pretty much all have buttons now, but pictures are still pretty rare and almost everybody I know still has to do his/her own perambulation. And none of them ever seemed to have heard of cell phones or the internet.

Go to the Science Museum if Star Wars or other science fiction impresses you. It’s your time and money. I’m no scientist. And I wouldn’t expect to become one by seeing the Star Wars exhibit.

And, of course, you will have to get there before the Republicans come to town since the place is just one of several places they have been given exclusive access to.

Truly a Scandal Sheet

When I was in junior high school, I had a teacher who referred to all pieces of paper, but particularly newspapers, as “scandal sheets.”

Fortunately for whatever current affairs minded students he had, his advice on newspapers probably did not carry a lot of weight since he taught industrial arts.

But there is an article in today’s DPP that makes you wonder about what he said.

The first sentence of an article titled, “Two teens shot on West Side, "reads

“Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby. Two teens were wounded by gunfire Saturday night on St. Paul's West Side as the city's Cinco de Mayo celebrations ended nearby.”

That’s it. There is no mention anyplace that there was any reason to believe that Cinco de Mayo had any connection to the shooting. We may find that out later, but except for the sensationalistic opening, the article gives no hint that the neighborhood celebration would have any connection with the story.

Using that kind of thinking, any crime that takes place anywhere in the city in late January or early February could be connected to the Winter Carnival. Of course, the Carnival is run by the rich and white for the rich and white and for downtown, not by minority people in a neighborhood.

Just think what crimes might be connected with the Republican National Convention.

Methinks that Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo needs to examine both her work and her motives.

UPDATE -5/5/08

In an article today St. [sic] Paul / Four teens, adult held in shootings, Nick Ferraro notes way down in the sixth paragraph,

[Police spokesperson] Panos said the shootings had nothing to do with the Cinco de Mayo Fiesta celebration that had just ended nearby.

Considering the placement that the paper and Ms. Leslie Brooks Suzukamo gave the matter Sunday, this should have been given better placement.

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.

Phalen Village Cub groundbreaking

I just returned from the groundbreaking for the new Phalen Village Cub store at 1157 Clarence.

Chuck Repke [who somehow manages to continue serving as Executive Director of both NENDC and District 2 Community Council] did a wonderful job as master of ceremonies. The expected politicians and developers gave the usual speeches.

Mayor Coleman the Second spoke first and suggested that perhaps Dan Bostrom could find future employment at the new store. It was made to look like it was being said in humor. The audience is free to make their own individual conclusions.

Councilmember Bostrom then commented that if he worked there that he would not be able to be a greeter for [a large Arkansas-based discount chain whose name I prefer to withhold], leaving one to wonder how he knew that said chain even had greeters.

Representatives of Oppidan and Cub spoke. Appropriate City staff people [including Penny Simison, Sheri Pemberton, Larry Zangs, and Tom Beach] were complimented for their work in making the thing possible and Oppidan’s representative lauded Mr. Repke.

In other words, it went pretty much to form as groundbreakings go.

Previous post: Revealing the Sign [11/1/2007]

Sober Houses, Neighborhoods, and Planning

A media release from the city of Saint Paul:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

February 19, 2008

PRESS ADVISORY
Panel Discussion about Sober Houses in Saint Paul

WHAT: The Neighborhood & Current Planning Committee of the Planning Commission will host a panel discussion to gather public input on the recently released draft of the Saint Paul Sober House Zoning Study. The panel will include representatives of district councils, the sober house operator community, and sober house residents.

WHEN: 7:00 pm 8:30 pm Monday, March 3rd 2008

WHERE: Martin Luther King Recreation Center
271 Mackubin St .
St. Paul , MN 55102

To request a copy of the City staff Zoning Study or submit questions for the panel, please contact:

Luis Pereira, City of Saint Paul
651-266-6591
luis.pereira@ci.stpaul.mn.us

Mail: Sober House Panel Questions
Attn: Luis Pereira
25 4th St W
1100 City Hall Annex
St. Paul , MN 55102

According to an article in the [Mpls. Star[-Journal and] Tribune, Councilmember Stark has said, "Defining what a sober house is and who's responsible if a problem arises is important," This seems hard to argue with, not that anybody is trying to argue.

But the same article goes on to note that study advises against licensing sober houses or notifying neighbors.

I haven’t seen the report yet, but it seems to me that not recommending that neighbors and district councils be notified about proposed sober houses is a major disappointment. The city notifies district councils on a variety of other matters which seem less exciting, like a variance being requested to build a fence two inches too high or somebody wanting to put up newer, more energy-efficient windows in a historical district. The county even notifies them of applications for family foster care. Certainly allowing notice of the possibility of a house which would be the abode up to a dozen or so challenged people does not seem out of order.

I am not denying that sober houses are needed. I would suggest that spacing and saturation regulations are a good idea and I do believe that neighbor notification should be a must and further suggest that if done correctly should minimize possible future conflicts and misunderstandings between the houses and their neighbors.

RIP: Sue's Park?

I was at the show that HKGI held last night at the Arlington Hills Lutheran Church to show five of its visioning ideas for the Payne Maryland Partnership.

It appears that the process was skewed to reflect the interests of the institutional parties involved [Merrick Community Services, Arlington Hills Lutheran, Bradshaw Funeral Home, City of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation, and the City of Saint Paul Library Agency]. They stated at the beginning that there primary focus was for the organizations that had owned real estate involved.

None of the five plans preserves Sue’s Park, which was set up almost twenty years ago to be passive and for which the city accepted a large donation to make it possible. Apparently Parks and Rec does not care about either the utter disrespect it is showing to the woman who made a five-figure donation or to what effect such cavalier disregard shows to future donors.

I was told that there would be a similar amount of green space available elsewhere on the new, expanded, site and that there would be no loss of park land, but there is no loss of green space only if one considers soccer fields green space.

I don’t think it does. Some people know that I am not big on soccer. I will state now that I firmly believe that I would be thinking the same if the fields were for an American game like football or baseball.

Earlier post:

Payne Maryland Partnership announces choice of visioning agency

Payne Maryland Partnership announces choice of visioning agency

At a media conference this afternoon, Payne/Maryland Partnership announced the choice of Hoisington Koegler Group, inc [HKGi] to be its visioning agency.

Speaking were Councilmember Bostrom, Mayor Coleman the Second, Greg Shipp of the Merrick Community Services Board, Barbara Schmidt of Arlington Hills Lutheran Church, and James Bradshaw of Bradshaw Mortuaries. [pictured]

Councilmember Bostrom spoke of the opportunities the partnership has and the challenges it faces, putting it into Payne Avenue historical perspective. The mayor spoke on the opportunities and possibilities. Mr. Shipp and Ms. Schmidt spoke on how their organizations are interested in cooperating and noted the 99^th and 100^th anniversaries of their organizations occurring this year.

After telling a stale undertaker joke, Mr. Bradshaw mentioned the changes in the death industry and suggested ways that his concern might fit into the project.

While I did not notice the presence of any other elected officials, the relevant city staff was there as well as representatives from neighborhood organizations. There were few questions, but a representative from HKGi was introduced in response to one of them and assured people that there would be a chance for public input into the matter. [Unfortunately, due to the acoustics of the room and my diminished hearing, I did not catch the man’s name.]

The visioning plan has an April 1, 2008 target for completion and will be holding a public open house at Arlington Hills Lutheran Church [1115 Greenbrier] on January 31 from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m.

Sheriff vs. Sheriff AND Isn't there supposed to be a PD or two in here someplace?

In a December 28 post, Doug Grow of MinnPost writes of the forthcoming battle between our own Lord High Sheriff, Sir Robert, and Hennipen County’s, Rich “I never used that word” Stanek, over who gets the most camera and ink during the upcoming Republican assault on our city.

Grow has an interesting way of throwing phrases around which I assume should be expected from his many years of writing for the Mpls. paper. His notes on how the two are set up for the race include these paragraphs:

Both men have similar backgrounds. Stanek is a former state legislator and former Minneapolis cop. Fletcher is a former St. Paul City Council member and St. Paul cop. Both are said to have dark sides. Neither is saddled with any troublesome humility.

Both men have built-in strengths for the race. Stanek, who has designed a dress uniform fit for a Latin dictator, heads an office nearly twice as large as Fletcher, 800 employees to 400. But Fletcher has the home-field advantage, given that the convention — Minneapolis views to the contrary — is a St. Paul event.

But the next paragraph is more telling of ongoing problems which indicate possible problems which likely will go beyond 2008.

Drop the name Fletcher around St. Paul police officials, or drop the name Stanek around Minneapolis police officials, and eyes roll -- and sometimes neck veins pop.

I don’t know if eliminating the office of Sheriff as an elected position would lessen this problem. After all, bureaucrats have egos too. But this may indeed be interesting stuff to observe next year.

Revealing the Sign

There was a time when people decried the displacement of local merchants by large chain store supermarkets.

Times have changed.

I just returned from a sign unveiling for a new Cub Store on Clarence south of Maryland. It wasn’t groundbreaking. Probably fifty others were out in the wind for the festivities. Nobody brought any shovels. Borings are already being done. There were some speeches and the bigwigs removed the cover from the sign.

The required officials were there, from the developer [Oppidan], Cub Foods and from the local officialdom. Councilmember Bostrom served as sort of an emcee and Mayor Colemsm the Second spoke.

The Cub exec spoke of this as their fourth Saint Paul Store. I am wondering where the third one is to be.

After the speeches most of the crowd managed to make it up to the Parkside Lounge for sandwiches and drumsticks. The Parksdide will soon be disappearing to make room for the new store..

As these events go, the event was not especially notable, but it does indicate that there will soon be another place for Saint Paul people to get their vittles.

Kudos should probably be given to North East Neighborhoods Development Company, Councilmember Bostrom, and city PED for getting the project this far. Mr. Bostrom certainly made sure that Mr. Chuck Repke of NENDC got his recognition.

I do not write the rules. I just play the game. [Cleanup Dept.]

For twenty years now the City has been funding District Councils to conduct district cleanups in spring and/or autumn. While some neighborhoods had operated cleanups with money raised in other matters, a moderate winter had left the city with money unspent on snow plowing and authorized a round of cleanups. These early cleanups were done with one-time money. Funding for future years was neither assured nor reasonable assumed. Of course, after a few years of one-time money, District Councils started to think of it as an entitlement and indeed it has become one in fact, if not in theory.

I helped plan and worked on the first Payne/Phalen cleanup in October 1987 and was the District Council president when what was probably the biggest cleanup in the city’s history took place the next autumn – a combined District 2-Distirct 5- Ramsey County Hazardous Waste Cleanup was held in the outer parking of the Phalen Shopping Center parking lot. Traffic was tied up for a mile or so in several directions. I’ve worked on many since, partly because my district runs them twice a year. I haven’t been involved in the planning, just in the doing, but I have great respect for those who put these things together.

And I acknowledge that properly done they do allow for a lot of “community building” and do get a lot of stuff out of the neighborhoods.

But I still wonder if this is the best way to go about things.

And for what it's worth to anybody reading this, this next Saturday [10/13] there is a combined cleanup for Highland Park and Macalester-Groveland and one for Payne/Phalen. The relevant cleanups probably need volunteers and clients. I imagine that you can contact the relevant District Councils.