Or did they spend it?
Last night's Ramsey City Council Work Session.
End of meeting. Strommen left. Elvig had left before that. Look was in the hallway talking to PACT school people.
Dehen, mayor, Jeffrey and Olson listened. Brian Olson indicated more cash would be sunk into Town Center. Lights and sidewalk along Sunwood Blvd.
$1.1 million. Done deal?
Will it later, at a meeting, be one of 14 items inconspiciously placed on the consent aagenda? Without numbers, mainly saying something like, "Approve bid solicitation and letting contracts, Sunwood Drive improvements."
It's been done. My hope for Kurt Ulrich was that high-handed Norman ways and means of doing business left when James Norman exited the stage.
Not so?
We wait. We see.
There was nothing in the full agenda saying "lights and sidewalk along Sunwood costing $1.1 million aggregate amount." I downloaded the full agenda. Zilch advanced warning. Zilch notice - this was afoot.
Then-
Bingo, spend.
If I am wrong, correct me. If the 59 pages of full agenda had any mention of $1.1 million, then please give me a page citation. 59 pages, and not a word about droppong a million dollars more into the questionable cash rathole known as Ramsey Town Center - for lighting and a sidewalk.
Putting money down a rathole is all you can call it.
IT BOGGLES MY MIND. A million got committed [or did it?] to a questionable sinking of good money after bad at an apparently failed project.
WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE AND WHY ARE THEY SO PROFLIGATE WITH PUBLIC CASH?
One excuse, it is from the escrowed cash recovered after Nedegaard's hopes died with him and a bankruptcy court action allowed the City to sieze cash but with the caveat that it is earmarked for Town Center "improvements."
But, there's storm sewer improvements on budget. For Town Center. Mandated that this be done. So, why not spend the impounded cash for that, instead of tax money?
If there's some requirement that the money NOT be used for storm sewer improvements, nobody's mentioned it or presented documents to the effect that any such constraint exists. So --- Save the taxpayers something, lessen a greater burden on something like that, rather than cosmetic lights and sidewalk.
A million to lessen the tax burden of storm sewer and holding pond development for that failed thing - it makes all the sense in the world to be nice to the taxpayers by having that kind of priority.
Probably why it was not done that way. Too sensible.
Instead be profligate. It's other peoples' money.