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Sunday, January 15, 2012

More about RAMSEY, its costs, and cost trimming.

In a private email, one individual who lives in Ramsey wrote me:

Are you telling me that Heidi Nelson spends 70% of her time with Landform?

My initial and direct reply was:

I am not telling you anything. I published what SHE told me, in an email.

On reflection I wrote a follow-up email:

If the Ramsey Town Center, however lipsticked up, were put on ice, a sit tight vs. pushing on a rope strategy, then Nelson could be converted to a part-time employee, at 30% of present time, 30% of present pay, and things would be fine. Save money on Nelson, staunch the cash drain to Darren; that's win-win. Or am I missing something? I have to admit to simplicity in thinking sometimes, with nuances escaping me.

That got me to thinking, the normal 40-hr workweek, with two week's vacation, is 2000 hrs. annually.

The claim is that even with the five-figure Landform money paid out each and every month as regular as clockwork for that firm to do its creative thinking such as has been done, why would 1400 staff hours, a pay-out of $70,000 as seventy percent of a hundred thousand dollar salary, be needed for saying "yes."

Contract negotiation with Landform has led to multiple council rewriting because the contracts gave too much, and the council had to modify and revise. If there was not too much "yes" and "anything any way you want" on the city's part in the negotiation exchange, a lack of undue pliant concession-giving is not apparent in the city's generosity, initially or as revised.

Consider --- What is the bang for the buck that attaches to the 1400 staff hours that Nelson spent on "The COR" and Landform matters? The question is not a hypothetical, but one the council must face in its looking at costs as an outcome of the mayor's "fire Kurt" putsch. Recall that the mayor precipitously proposed, fire Kurt and give Nelson the top job, and that brings front and center the question of how efficient has she been with time expenditure, were she have been put into Kurt's place. No analysis of such things went into any presentation by the mayor, on the record, when the mayor made his "fire Kurt" proposal.

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I have always believed that under today's real estate realities, a "sit tight vs. pushing on a rope" strategy was the only thing making sense regarding the failed half of the RTC - the raw land. I thought so when the land was in foreclosure and after the City bought it for what the City paid.

Now with a will to cut budget, my belief may be one the council adopts.

When Reed left, Nelson took over human services responsibility, or that title at least, and I am surprised not more time was consumed in bringing about the past year's lowering of personnel costs by staff contractions (i.e., by firing people) and (when administrators left) by job duty transfers vs replacement hiring.

My guess is that Nelson's actual role was secondary in such serious matters, with Kurt involved in the hard decision making, as to imposition of hardship on some and the increase of workload for others.

That level of decision making is what Kurt does, and does best. He is nobody's yes-man.

His leadership is needed, certainly more than 1400 hours of last year at $50/hr for interfacing with Landform, which firm was paid $15,000 per month to function largely autonomously, and to be the source of innovative thought and action, with staff only supportive.

For a perspective - That's a lot of cash to Landform along with a big bite of staff time, with Jim Deal's efforts added into the equation where clearly he served his own real property interests but also was a private-sector no-fee bonus to City of Ramsey, with the Morgue, the Cafe, Allina Clinic and the VA locating onto property he owned.

While that did not compensate the city for any spending it took on in buying raw land and buying Landform extended services since mid-2009 (if I remember correctly), it at least gave the council something to brag about as new at Town Center.

It improved the overall package. It was not window dressing, but substantial.

Bottom line - Deal was more effective than Landform. And he cost the city less, in not taking any fee or salary, but directing growth to his private-sector property instead of on the property of his public-sector competitor, City of Ramsey.

Also, it was the Governor's bonding bill that resulted in the rail stop, love it or not, and Deal is not without attention and respect from senior DFL officials.

I think of the basketball career of Karl Malone, called "the Mailman," because he delivered.