Some random thoughts.
The recent few times I have been in City Hall it seemed as if staff is more cheerful since the New Year started. It could be due to one of several factors.
Let Ben decide that.
My read on things is there is a city-wide recognition that the housing market is in a trough.
Irrational exuberance from the past may have quelled a bit.
Thought about giving Met Council a plan that averages three units per non-wetland acre would still allow flexibility in how that plan is structured. Some mischief over premature and what I see as unwise sewer-water routing has been done, but its downside can presently be minimized and localized by sound thinking in what gets presented for Met Council approval as the Ramsey 2008 comprehensive plan. It will go through a staff that has been reconstituted, but solely by alteration at the top. And that alteration might prove to be enough to yield a far better and prompter plan than previously. We shall see. Ben will keep smiling.
The sobering thought: The last three Anoka County Union issues have had a legal notices section [aka county-wide home mortgage foreclosure notices] each of which was thicker than this Sunday's Strib "homes for sale" advertising section. Go figure.
I will credit those having more of a say in things than Ben or I have, with a more "cautious" attitude. Not an enlightened attitude, not all of them, but "cautious." Perhaps a sobered attitude is the term. A restrained attitude. The push for sewer-water northward that began even before the new January 2003 council was sworn in and seated, and that had a distinct flavor to it, looks to have resulted in market timing doing what a citizens' charter amendment effort could not.
The market may have taught restraint. Perhaps not. Ben is across from City Hall, watching, waiting, smiling - for now, perhaps forever, seeing how things unfold.
For now, Town Center sitting in a failed state, or in stasis, presents an opportunity to get it right, and this opportunity reaches even to officials who earlier critized as "negative thinking" those who urged caution and keeping a view of downside risk.
Town Center can stay as it is as long as nobody in the develooper camp comes forward with new money to risk. The weeds look better to me than Crabgrass.
Crabgrass should not be fertilized with Ben's cash, should it?
I like the RAMSEY3 people, and trust their judgment. While the first session began without mention of Met Council, and with praise of an ediface I find wasteful, Met Council must be factored into the equation and its absence from discussion the first session and the exuberance expressed over the new building did not dampen my belief in RAMSEY3 people being sound and well-motivated.
That "Met Council as 800 pound gorilla" factor will have to be faced, but the RAMSEY3 people are smart enough to know that. Things are especially encouraging now, with the department heads at City Hall now seeming (to me) to have more autonomy and freedom to do a good job than might have been the case in the recent past.
The planning department working enthusiastically with the RAMSEY3 citizens and listening to the 2-1/2 acre beliefs expressed at the Planning Commission meeting is promising. The entire council needs to follow suit. The mayor at a televised meeting expressed his recognition of the general attitude of the people taking time to speak on the 2-1/2 acre issue. If only worksessions were still televised. Or televising them wree to be reinstituted. Then we could see it all at home in our armchairs and without having to go to that offensively oppulent new building.
Green space and wildlife habitat preservation, in large enough contiguous spaces to be effective, will be something to weigh in planning; beyond wetland preservation; and that quality of life factor likely will not be ignored or given too little care this planning go-round. Perhaps foundation money can be found to buy up conservation rights to existing land. Buy out such rights from the Boy Scouts on Highway 47, if necessary, if there's any inkling they and their advisory leadership would want to sell out to dense housing. Others have sold out exactly that way, and the Scouts land and other land north of it on Highway 47 might be preserved along with greenspace at the north end of Variolite [a street which most certainly should remain as it is, unextended northward].
There are places farmland can be kept farmland, to the benefit of all.
I am optimistic about the opportunities. I am pessimistic about some now still holding office having perhaps the notion, still, that the public is somehow the "enemy" to be hoodwinked, misled, and conquored; instead of the public being the key source of leadership ideas better than or as sound as ideas that come from insiders or the Crabgrass contingent (and/or their allies on council or staff).
On-council landowner representation leading to misjudgment is my main worry; because I believe that for those without meat in the fire there might be an upward sloping learning curve for the other evil of hubris and an unwillingness to lead except by playing shell games with the citizenry - with Ben.
The two new people on council so far appear promising of sober and wise leadership.
After running for office with the thought of wanting to fire an individual who ended up firing himself [aka resigning] my worry now is that a clone of the past could be installed where a new direction might be more proper. I notice that the resignation was accompanied by three of the seven council members from last year praising the past nine years more than I would have, but with four of that council, including the two lame ducks, not at all publicly quacking.
That was 4/7th of an encouraging picture, to me. Yet 3/7th appeared out of kilter, seeming to me to need repair or replacement. Ben and I shall wait and see.