Some of the black-and-tan web bloviating has been removed to get the three perps together on one image. And, hey Matt, try the correct form of the past tense of the verb, "to lead" which is "led." It will look better. Then, "our sentinel." Quaint. I believe a precondition to standing oneself up as town sentinel first involves sentience, which is the key question. Beyond those details the three wise men are there together, on the record, proud of their collective integrated intertwined wisdom.
NEXT: Start with Darren. He's sucking regular money out of city funds, which I am sure he finds convenient and something he'd see continue indefinitely, if that's in the cards.
Beyond that, he makes his killings if, against the market as it still stands and suggests it will be trending for years, he can move junk into Town Center with each junk drop making it another Blaine-like shopping knot as at an intersection of Highway 65, but making Darren money. To advance that he's led town officials to standard cookie-cutter shopping mall conventions in Las Vegas, the developers meeting, schmoozing, gambling and looking for sheep for fleecing. Darren brings them sheep. Putting money in Darren's pocket need not be a community goal, however, and the polls are for having a nice little local referendum on Darren.
How it has been, how it should be.
The original Town Center dream, with Natalie having said as best as I recall the quote, "If you do not have a dream someone will lay one on you," is non-congruent with Darren's dream of advancing Darren by ho-hum buildout - the faster the better.
The "original vision" has drawn my objection in the past in that the Mondale son, the one with ties back to Petters and Fingerhut and Met Council and Nazca Software, who now is ballpark guru of Gov. Dayton, pushed "smart growth" and the notion one could buck the trend of Blaine-like ugliness and sameness at every light on the highway and try planning instead. And that planners and community pooh-bahs could fashion Nirvana from Kurak's green acres cornfield.
A ton of hubris goes with that belief. A belief that one could defeat the forces of oil waste and marketeers flogging yet more new-and-zippy automobiles upon us so that we could drive all over everywhere and buy stuff, if only we would first buy over-priced gasoline - something that could sustain itself until peak oil reality sets in to curb the behavior much as the market adjusted to housing reality.
The hubris was that people could be reformed before the peak oil bust. The commitment Ramsey made, agree or disagree with the wisdom - even call it a pact with the Devil, was to preserve much of the character of most of Ramsey by concentrating growth into shared wall along the highway, which also means along Northstar - where there would be a walkable community.
No sooner was that committment made along with much loud public touting of containing and concentrating growth that way; than Elvig, chair of the Town Center Task Force that packaged and marketed that dream much as Coors sells beer, went on council, and pushed for sewer-water to the gun club so Jerry Bauer could make his quick cash-out Crabgrass killing - and never mind the containment and concentration story.
So much for any promise of preserving the rural character of much of Ramsey's nether northern "character." Less shotgun pop-pop neighborhood noise, yes, but less rural "character" too.
Whatever you may think of the containment-concentration vision that was touted and then, things did not happen that way. The shared wall market went real. Etc. Yet do not fail to understand - Darren's quick kill approach is sticking a sharp stick into the eye of that look at the long-term vision, however flawed, and its trying to preserve existing neighborhood integrity and the semi-rural character dream, while marrying the growth monster. And marrying the growth monster is something Met Council is demanding, one way or the other. Blaine or better.
Joni Mitchell had the Big Yellow Taxi song, with the line, "They paved Paradise and put in a parking lot."
That's the present council's "dream." Although some might contest equating Ramsey to Paradise. But let that whole question go for now. Voters must decide whether they like the McGlone-mayor-Matt vision of making us another Blaine, or whether we need the patience to await the market instead of pushing against a rope, and whether we abandon the quick cash for Darren viewpoint and stick with "the Dream" as a better if imperfect and probably impractical thing, but one demanding hope and a twenty to fifty year perspective for hoping.
It is a bipolar choice. Let time run its course with plans and goals, vs quick and dirty and same-as-Blaine.
Personally, I have little faith in either approach, but the one encouraging patience seems to at least be sane vs. Blaine. It is hard to undo mistakes, a lesson the present town savants seem to have missed in considering Nedegaard and the lesson of building a town hall palace that would "catalyze" all else. Now it's massive ugly rentals by the rails, to catalyze, and has anyone thought, this entire catalyst mythology is a lie and sucks?
It is that simple, this election old vision and patience, or push on a rope to get Darren commissions while chasing the dream of being like Blaine.
A referendum on Darren. On Landform. On a big humongo cash sink, in hard times where money for roadwork is also a concern.
And then there are the Hunts. Owning rural land and not enamored of keeping all the concentration and growth along the highway. During comp planning, there was an invasion of the Hunts. In numbers, every meeting. They own acreage along Highway 5, and want to Crabgrass it. Presumably sooner would have been better to them as they stood with John Peterson's cornfield to be finished and then, Bingo, their turn, fat city on the horizon, just over the rainbow. Then the market in housing went real, and the Hunts consequently have gone into hibernation. Good things can happen from bad times.
But the Hunts are a side-show to the Clown Center main tent show. Even with the election being a chance to be a bit about Hunt thinking vs. preservation thinking.
Another key question is, do we want new faces on council that might reform the charter to tighten it against conflict of interest, when it appears the majority of present folks either chase a conflicting paycheck or turn a blind eye to it?
There is that referendum also in this year's local ballot box.
My brother-in-law got a fortune cookie scroll now fridge-magneted (really there is such a verb because language is fluid and evolving) yes, fridge-magneted up in the kitchen:
"Life is a tragedy to those who feel. A comedy to those who think."
This post is about the comedy of Town Center, as it is playing out and as you can vote in the election.
Same people retained - love Blaine, you will see it here. The rerouting of Sunwood is the first step. Aim higher if you will, and it involves voting in an alternate set of minds, (using that noun in the broadest sense re present officialdom's sitting majority).
What I find interesting, is that the ones with the long term perspective are Steffen, Jim Deal, and Al Pearson and some on the Ramsey Foundation who are elderly compared to the impatient present official decision makers in city hall.
Those favoring the long-term perspective and hopes are those less likely to live to see a long term future implemented. Yet they do not abandon thinking long term. Those more likely having longer remaining time on earth are lacking patience and a distant vision. Lacking good judgment and experience is how I see it. And Darren wants as much cash and as quickly to him as Darren can convince people into providing him by rote following of his Pied Piper leading of children.
Indeed. A comedy. So kick back and observe - but do vote Aug. 14, and in November.