The poll ended today.
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Results are unequivocal.
100% - 16 of 16 responsdents await next year's elections as a way to redirect Ramsey policy - Yes, it is time for a change.
86% - 13 out of 15 responses - offended by City online developer and builder surveys without any show of care for what citizens think.
Results will be added to the prior survey outcome post, lower in the sidebar.
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While the latest two question sidebar poll is open this will stay atop the posts. After closing noon, Dec. 15, poll results will be added to the summary listing lower on the sidebar.
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See links, here, here, and here. If you are only a citizen paying for it all, go talk to Ben Dover.
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City savants care what cultivated crabgrass says. But meanwhile, the Citizen voice has been publicized only via Crabgrass polls and poll results.
I add one citizen's thoughts:
-- The spending on Landform is an outrage.
-- Developers ARE crabgrass.
-- Flaherty IS a developer.
-- Subsidies worth millions for Flaherty is inexcusably bad policy.
That's it for now. But please vote in the new sidebar poll.
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| Earlier Crabgrass post. |
____________UPDATE____________
Ramsey Councilmember Randy Backous left a comment which after review deserves insertion here, into the post rather than being left as a comment many might never read. See what he says, he has taken care and time in choosing his words.
Eric:
Please don't misrepresent what we're trying to accomplish with this survey and the involvement of Developers. I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to get feedback from those who may want to build in Ramsey. I agree with a lot of what you say in your article – the spending on Landform is irresponsible and an outrage and the subsidies for The Residence at The COR is bad policy - but I disagree that “Developers are Crabgrass.” I respect your opinion; I just disagree with that basic premise. I know a lot of fine, hard-working regular people who are “Developers.”
The vast majority of Developers are just regular folks who build homes, retail and office buildings that we need as a well-rounded community. Now I understand that some people (such as you) dislike office and retail developments, but most of us want them. They provide convenience, jobs and most importantly, lower taxes. We certainly need homes to live in. Most of these Developers build their projects without help from government. They are not all evil leaches. I know a few of these people who build homes and they have always told me that Ramsey is the most expensive and hardest to deal with. They stay away from Ramsey if they can.
As elected officials, it is our duty to get to the core (no pun intended) of why developers prefer not to build in Ramsey. What exactly is causing their negative opinion of us? I want an answer to that question and then I want to find a solution to the problem. The assertion that we don’t care what our citizens think because we’re surveying developers is an unfair and illogical leap. Of course we care what our citizens think!
I do appreciate your passion however and the fact that you pay attention. These are admirable qualities but please be fair.
Randy Backous
Ramsey Council – At-Large
My view is developers should be allowed to pitch a case, but not encouraged - not chased down and solicited to come to some mid-afternoon session, etc., and certainly not subsidized - except for the shops and restaurants long ago promised, while still awaited but for Acapulco and Falls Cafe restaurants and the Coborn store and Caribou Coffee, the mailbox, and other stores on that corner site I have never had cause to visit, but which others might value as local resources. I have no problem with minor amounts that subsidized the two restaurants, if that is needed to get them to the Town Center, but the free parking ramp and banking position for millions at risk on Flaherty is a horse of a different color. Randy has proven to be one of the better council members. All three of the newest, Backous, Tossey and Strommen to me are the best three on board. Yet, I disagree totally with Backous and endorse the view of his critics about the closing that street off Hwy 47, north of the strip mall, west side of the road. Aside from that, Backous from all I have seen has seemed practical and sensible --- and a minority Ramsey council thing these days, restrained and fiscally cautious. In saying, "Of course we care what our citizens think," Backous is speaking for himself most certainly, but I would like to press him privately sometime on how inclusive "we" means to him. And about whether he'd like a survey of citizen opinion to be done via the city website and/or by a random mailing specifically touching the Landform and Flaherty interrelated situations.
If they really cared what we think, they'd have a referendum. About keeping Landform. About becoming a developers' bank, i.e., the Flaherty situation. Without a Referendum - The next election will have to be that, for those seats that are open. A surrogate referendum. Something like that.
In emailing, Randy further said:
Just to be clear though...I love the F&C project and I think it will be a big success. I just don't think we should've participated financially to the level we did. Government should stimulate but not participate. I know it was a tough call for some and I'm not second guessing them. Only time will tell now.
I think the rental thing will fail and will prove, long term, to not be good for the community. Aside from that, I replied to Randy:
I revised and extended the post. I will add this latest thought of yours. I AM second guessing the steadfast unwillingness and affirmative refusal of the COUNCIL to have had a referendum before such things were done - and I AM second guessing the entire way Landform was insinuated into things, original sin in my view, where Jeffrey and Dehan were kept in the dark - mushroomed, on the original thing which was represented as a $23,000 thing where competitive bidding was not required. Then it grew and grew, and monthly Landform time records were not demanded from start to finish. Nor were regular accountings required, start to finish, of how and for what and to whom Ramsey money advances were spent. It is an improper and imprudent way to do contracting, and needful of reform. It raises a host of questions.
I think you have to second-guess things like that. Procedure is important. Detail is. With Jungbauer on the Landform payroll, with him in the legislature, with the legislature after time passed having popped four million bonding cash for the train stop, then with detail in accounting missing where normally expected - it raises a host of questions.
___________FURTHER UPDATE__________
In exchanging a few emails with Margaret Connolly, she focused upon the fact that Randy misinterpreted my "Developers are Crabgrass" as if I was attributing "evil leeches" status to them. Margaret wrote, " I thought that you meant that developers spread in an area like crabgrass and once embedded are hard to get rid of especially the bad ones," in her opening email, and "I had just read what Randy wrote about how non evil developers are and I never thought that you thought they were evil just greedy and short sighted," in a second email.
I think Margaret has a good understanding of what I intended to be saying, and I would not be surprised if she and many, many others share my view. And in saying that, I am not putting Landform and developers into the same category as if they are equivalent, having never called Landform "crabgrass." Landform is ...