On the Senate recount, it is important that the person with the most votes be recognized as such and posturing beyond that is unhelpful. On the Coleman-Kazeminy situation, it is serious if a Senator did something as wrong as appearances suggest, and we can trust there will be some kind of investigation, the hope being that it will be a real one, not all show and no action. On the Ramsey Comp Plan problems, I stand on what I wrote as a sound view, although not the only possible one.
That leaves, with regard to Ramsey, the Armstrong Highway 10 interchange situation, which is touched upon in two earlier posts, here and here.
I had hoped to draw commentary on those, since they are overstatements. Provocatively so in one instance.
We need Highway 10 fixed.
We need Highway 47 fixed.
We need the rush hour posture of Ferry Street at Highway 10 in Anoka fixed.
The suggestion of routing Highway 47 traffic to Thurston, where there is a rail line overpass and where the Highway 47 traffic that is bound for Highway 10 will be separated north of the stretch of Ferry Street crossing the tracks and reaching the interchange in Anoka is a sound plan. It will allow that Anoka situation, and the interchange in Anoka to service local traffic and traffic crossing the river. Those planned changes will help make things less a burden.
Back to the Highway 10 - Armstrong interchange.
Improving that dangerous and faulty interchange where the tracks are so close to the highway should be promoted for its true and separate merit. Separate from anything having to do with the patch of prairie weed called Town Center.
The community needs that interchange upgraded to lessen the mess that rush hour along Highway 10 is, although the greatest need, which is slowly progressing, is to upgrade Highway 10 itself past Ramsey into Sherburne County. All of the Anoka County part of it not already upgraded needs work, and completing it yesterday would have been better than not, but it did not happen that way.
However, it is false and insulting to the large segment of Ramsey people who view and have viewed Town Center as dumb from the outset, and dumber as it was handled into its current failed posture.
That means officials should "sell" the Armstrong interchange improvement NOT as needed to somehow magically resuscitate the moribund dumb Town Center project. Doing that misses the reality that the entire community for its travel convenience needs the dangerous and troublesome situation at that intersection fixed, INDEPENDENT of the Town Center fiasco.
And that is how it should be presented to taxpayers - fix it because the benefit will exceed its cost to you, it being a wise thing to do on a cost-benefit balance INDEPENDENT of Town Center. It independently makes sense and is needed.
Town Center is the cart.
Fixing the road because of TRUE community need, will be the horse that MIGHT or might not pull the cart.
But don't put the cart before the horse.
Finally, the other post link above -- Bob Ramsey will be mayor at least four years [assuming no cause for recall arises, something none of us should anticipate at this point]. For him to have taken a no-tax-rate-increase stance even before taking a seat at the council table was extreme, and perhaps an election ploy.
Rather than woodenly wanting to hold him to that, we should think to hold him to a far higher standard, one lacking in his predecessor, a requirement of good judgment instance by instance.
A studied and broad-perspective good judgment is needed, and one that will give due regard to downside risk and downside potential. Such risk aware decision making seems to have been lacking, and it is what is needed.
Let us hope the next four years are good ones for the community, with a new council, a more restrained though flexible council, not tied to any particular dogmatic stance.
We should always want a future better than the past. We should always realistically plan that risks may arise making it less of a good future if we ignore negative possibility.
So, if anyone reads this and disagrees with anything I say, please think about a well reasoned comment about points of agreement and disagreement. Dialog is good. In particular, anyone wanting to defend the status quo and the decision making that led up to it, have at it. That is a viewpoint I would enjoy seeing cogently defended.
________UPDATE_________
There is a further harder question. With it appearing a Comp. Plan will emerge allowing a profligate amount of growth around Trott Brook and Highway 5, [with the process already well underway, via John Peterson's pursuit of profits from a former low-traffic cornfield there, the corn staying rooted, not owning automobiles], there will be greatly increased traffic demand upon that Highway 5 roadway, an already clogged road during rush hour under present traffic levels. How any upgrade of that road should, in a fair and equitable world, be allocated - socialized to all taxpayers or concentrated upon those placing the incremental strain on the system vs. legal options to be so equitable - is a question complicated by a most pernicious precedent. That is a topic for a later separate post.