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Tuesday, July 24, 2012

RAMSEY - Is it time for an update?

Tammy Sakry of ABC Newspapers did an excellent report of the cash drain Town Center has been, along with opinions expressed by officials; but it was done over a year ago, March of 2011, and time has passed and cash has flowed.

Back then, curiously, Sakry reported:

If the city would not have purchased the 150 acres, then Allina Clinic would not exist and the VA Clinic would not be here and the rail station would not be coming, Mayor Ramsey said during the meeting.

Each of the two clinics is built on land Jim Deal owned before Landform had any contract with the City. The City, via Lazan, competed with Jim Deal for the VA clinic, and we all know the outcome. Lazan was suggesting the clinic should be built on that land the mayor mentioned, that the City had purchased; but it did not happen that way.

Regarding the train stop: At a meeting shortly after the State had allocated taxpayer money to be used on a train stop; I believe it was a mayor's town hall evening where the mayor had invited Michael Jungbauer; the mayor and the Senator each more than once referred to "the Governor's bonding bill" with neither seeming anxious to claim credit for millions of State tax money being secured as local pork for the Northstar train.

Or that is how it seemed, in hearing each refer to "the Governor's bonding bill" as frequently as I heard the term that day.

I expect that Jim Deal had a lot of say in the Northstar stop happening when it did and not later. Jim Deal, like him or not, has been proof that skilled and experienced private sector entrepreneurs get things done - and keep their costs privatized and free of socialism. Any reader knowing or believing otherwise is urged to submit a comment.

Lazan, who had Cronk of the Flaherty firm on board from the get-go, did finally get a closing in favor of the Flaherty firm; and no other closings; but that was only after [1] a ramp expansion funded wholly out of public money for giving Flaherty cost-free parking; [2] a compromise of the SAC and WAC charges that developers like Flaherty normally are expected to pay; and then [3] that multi-million dollar gamble of public money to finance the part of it Flaherty's Pittsburgh bank would not finance and which Flaherty was unable or unwilling to fund for himself.

I guess Flaherty is no Jim Deal, or he likes to share his risks with taxpayers; while Deal has behaved as he has.

I have a request in for updated numbers of spending on the Lazan consultancy; Vegas; and such, asking Ramsey's CFO Diana Lund for that public data by month's end, and so far she's not indicated any inability or problems with that time frame. I believe my good friend Bill Goodrich is aware of my having data requests, and understands the reach and legislative expectations underlying Minnesota's Public Data Act. I hope to have good numbers from the City by months end, to share with readers.

Citizens have a right to know the current numbers. Holding back such data disclosure would be unconscionable. Candidates for office besides incumbents deserve to have the aggregate public data on the spending extremes posted in a form easily understood by taxpayer-voters.