Tuesday, Jan 2, I posted in anticipation of the city's Planning Commission meeting. Here are impressions.
First, an early case on relocating a cell phone tower from privately-owned Ramsey Crossroads land to the city-owned firestation site on Armstrong was where I suggested that the lease and permit process for towers should consider a condition for city communication use - beyond emergency [fire/police/med services] - to anticipate possible WiFi or WiMax growth, city-owned as St. Louis Park has elected or franchised, so that tower use rights reserved now need not be purchased later. It is a win-win situation, a you-scratch-my-back thing with the tower owner, and I expect WiFi and/or WiMax anticipation and planning will easily be integrated into city staff thinking.
For 21st century wireless internet for the people, you need to anticipate and try to be somewhat leading edge on services without being one of the unfortunate pioneers with an arrow in the back.
The big ticket meeting item was the cluster ordinance burial, and the question of interim status for the rural area - whether it should be a 4-in-40 choke hold, 2-1/2 acre development allowed, or "other."
The notion staff presented was that a 4-in-40 hold would be "interim" while 2008 Comprehensive Plan effort began and reached finality. Years of delay can occur, and the citizen consensus at the public hearing seemed to be: dump clustering, shift to 2-1/2 acre permission in the interim, and hope this Comprehensive Plan evolution is not as long and difficult as the last one proved to be. Much of the seismic earthquake issue-facing and resolution of that plan has resulted in the crabgrass proliferating, unfortunately, but at least the built-up seismic pressures should be less this go-around. People can get worn down like rocks on a beach are worn to sand, and while that's unfortunate, the time frame this go-round should not be as prolonged.
With complications, the Planning Commission largely passed the peoples' thinking on.
Now we shall see the Council, with two new members - new blood, surely, but with their collective holdover-dominated opportunity to muck things up with imposition of a 4-in-40 strangle hold despite a clear showing of what folks caring to go out in the rain and spend an evening listening to initial cases of little general interest [but somehow clogging the path to the things folks showed up for], to be heard and to hear other public comment. I thought the Planning Commission did okay, I think the notion that many, many people feel the "why we moved to Ramsey was" sentiment that having open lot spacing vs. crowding was, is and will be the better idea. That's so, despite Met. Council always being a threat to "Lake Elmo" any local people showing spunk and individualism and character, and despite staff's preference for something more like a de facto moritorium without any time limit - aka "four-in-forty" or whatever it's called in planner-speak these days.
I had to leave after that but had a general view of the TIF proposals as, in my view, a bad idea aimed at more sop for the failed Town Center - instead of sensibly cutting losses and moving on to autopsy. TIF low income housing. TIF senior housing. Go ahead with Ramsey Crossroads and all without any clear idea of who's going to be running the developer faction now that Bruce Nedegaard has died. His death was like a taboo subject - no one may speak of it, just as it is officially taboo now to say Town Center's a proven failure, and officially taboo to say stop this Pork Authority run at porking the taxpayers and ferret out who it is that is or was promoting that terrible thinking besides James A. Norman, who no longer has a voice in running things.
Even more important than finger pointing, assigning blame for the entire Pork Authority mischief, is to end it. I would be fully satisfied if it's ended to move on without finger-pointing. And there is always the convenience of everyone pointing at the departed James A. Norman, saying, "Not me," and then moving on to better business.
But PORK AUTHORITY matters were not part of the Planning Commission session, so drop it for now.
RAMSEY3 The final thing, I had a brief opportunity to talk to Patrick Trudgeon about Ramsey3, even while having to leave at 10:30 - 11:00 pm when that topic finally hit the screen. Patrick indicated he will be putting or may be putting his Power Point presentation slides on the city website. I hope he does. Apparently, Ramsey3 is not a tightly conceived plan or idea, but a process aimed at assessing and sharpening community feelings about noneconomic quality of life features of a community growing in population and having a fixed land area of several square miles and varying natural resources and transportation options therein.
It sounds real mushy, but one indication has been that Ralph Brauer has had input and he is totally trustworthy, well-motivated, bright and anything but mistake prone - so I think ideas he might endorse deserve respect and attention from the start . For now I will cut quite a bit of slack for "Ramsey3" and not go into things presuming it's to be another bad sales job as was done to us with Town Center. That poisoning of the well of citizen goodwill by the promoters and hangers-on via their now famous false "nice shops and restaurants" so-called "referendum" and all, without those touting it then forthrightly saying upfront, the thing will end up being humongo amounts of crowded shared-wall housing on the Kurak cornfield with tons of city money dumped into a gigantic money pit with no discernible end to it.
I bet the for-and-against vote would have turned out differently with that wording on the ballot.
AND THAT NEW CITY HALL BUILDING IS AN EASY THING TO ABSOLUTELY HATE AND RESENT FOR THE WASTEFULNESS AND PRETENTIOUSNESS IT EMBODIES. The meeting was there, and it was there to see. I wonder if Jim Norman quit because he could not have a fresco on the building's foyer-area raised ceiling, Michaelangelo style, fitting for a pope's Sistine Chapel.
While the uninteresting time-wasting stuff at the front of the meeting agenda was being haggled, I walked around.
The furnishings are lavish.
Paid for from taxes and spare no expense. I saw in some city papers, a half-million for furnishings alone.
The amount of pecan wood colored paneling suggested some old east coast private millionaires' men's club luxuriousness, rather than a modest Midwestern town's government building.
Perhaps it was not pecan-color stained, or veneer, but pure pecan wood paneling, since after all it was our officials spending taxes. Taxpayer Ben was still out there yellow smiley-face smiling, across the street, in the cold, dark and drizzle.
There simply is no excuse for having dumped $16 million into that money pit, where not one penny of tax revenue will result because the city owns it and it's futile to pay itself taxes from its tax revenue.
Instead of the bonanza of tax benefit that the tub-thumpers on the Town Center Task Force were marketing to us, we have a costly ramp - zero tax income from it, a costly palace - zero tax income from it, and a clear and apparent failure in all that open spaces without shops and restaurants anywhere to see or speak of.
At the League of Women Voters preelection candidate forum incumbent David Elvig talked about Riverdale and Maple Grove, and things like that "taking time."
David, time I will concede you. Take as much time as you've left on earth. Take forever.
Take all the time from now until whenever, at Town Center, for the crabgrass to grow - for the developers wanting their private profits to put up their private money and to make it happen.
Please folks there, successors in interest to Bruce Nedegaard, take your time, proceed prudently, and over time prove me wrong. But please use your money to gamble with.
Here's the mantra to keep reciting:
PLEASE, DEVELOPERS, DO IT WITH YOUR OWN MONEY OR MONEY YOU BORROW FROM BANKS. DON'T AIM TO PROFIT FROM STANDING ON TAXPAYER BACKS. YOU ARE HEAVY TO CARRY. AND DON'T EXPECT RISKLESS PROFIT VIA RECUTTING THE DEAL BRUCE NEDEGAARD CUT. PLEASE DON'T AIM AT EXTRACTING MORE FROM THE CITY, BUT INSTEAD LIVE WITH THE DEAL. IT ALREADY IS MOST UNFAVORABLE TO RAMSEY'S PRESENT RESIDENT-TAXPAYERS AND THERE IS NO CAUSE TO HAVE TAXPAYERS FINANCE THE MAKING OF PRIVATE FORTUNES. NONE. ZERO. NADA.
End of mantra. Keep reciting it until it becomes a rote part of your existence. Or keep paying out subsidy to the private interests. It's your call.
My challenge to Elvig and others on the council. Admitted, it will take time. Take all the time you want. Take forever, I don't care. Just stop taking taxpayer money. Stop it whether it is via Pork Authority shams or by more open and legitimate means.
Yo. There's no port in Ramsey. So what's with that sorry gimmick and why not give it up?
Get honest about it and stop.
It really looked to be a cold and lonely night for happy-faced Ben out in the dark across from the palace. But some folks parked along the road, by Ben, so he was not left wholly alone.
Did anyone park in that stupid ramp?
If you did, please leave a comment.