RAMSEY - Weekly Updates are now published online, and this is good. NEXT - An additional ten grand one-shot windfall payment was popped for Landform, on top of the regular monthly cash drain from city coffers. For signs. No kidding. SIGNS. REALLY. This level of ten-grand-here-and-there-but-always for-Landform audacity is bad, not good, it has to stop, etc.

NOTICE: As an opening note, here, the City indicates posting, "Agendas & Weekly Update (AgendaQuick):". However, by toggling the link, the City's weekly update item is not listed with other items. Yet Weekly Updates are now available. Some may be unaware that Weekly Updates exist. Previously Weekly Updates were shared among officials but not published for the public. That changed as of August 16, 2012, with Weekly Updates are posted here. (With LaserFiche links sometimes failing to work, you can will reach Weekly Updates: from here, if you toggle the "archive" link, and note the alphapetical list now includes "Weekly Updates.")

Presently, the city website subscription page does not yet include the ability to subscribe to email notices of Weekly Update publishing. However, I am sending an email to Dean Busch, Ramsey's IT chief and Webmaster, so after the holiday expect that those details will be fixed. From the few Weekly Updates I have seen in the past, the document is concise but wide-ranging and informative, so again, the step of publishing them for downloading and review is praiseworthy.

Feel like a million?

BACK TO THE MAIN MEAT OF THE POST: Tuesday, Aug. 28, during the televised HRA meeting, there was an agenda item. See pages 8 and 9, of this 8/28/12 HRA agenda. Read it and weep. I think it made Ben Dover's smile drop a little.

At this time of year the squirrels normally are putting acorns away for the worse of winter.

With an election pending, we may wonder about squirreling away cash, for next January and onward.

Make this election a referendum on largesse to Landform, on those incumbents who seek to stay and who have a pattern of extended largesse to Landform. Make the election a referendum on the underpinning of feeling like a million.

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I am unsure. Does that mean public money for signage for Jeff Wise's relocated liquor store, into a prime spot in Town Center? We pay that, plus ten grand to Landform for facilitating the privilege of subsidizing Jeff? If not that, what does it mean?

If you care, the tail end updating of this Crabgrass post explains how citizens can support the "responsible government" aim represented in support of a range of candidacies including the three clear-majority-vote-getters in the recent Ramsey primary election: LeTourneau at large, Kuzma ward 2, and Riley ward 4.

Beyond the three primaries and the winners there; "Citizens for Responsible Government" supports the challenger in the Ramsey mayor contest and a pair of attractive county board challengers of the county's status quo.

That post toward its end even tells you where you can send a contribution that would be aimed to assist the "Citizens for Responsible Government" choices. Or send individual candidates contributions; but in challenging the status quo in a presidential year the need to reach non-regular voters with helpful information is great, while mailings and signs cost a lot.

If you want to alter the largesse for Landform status quo; or at least have a chance that way; please help those willing to volunteer time running for office against that status quo. I cannot say any particular candidate would want to oust Landform or not, I do not know feelings that way. Each challenger hopefully will be prudent and careful with public money, if elected.

What is clear is the status quo. That status quo has been abundantly clear and without a ballot box status quo council majority repeal there will be little to no likelihood of repeal of largesse to Landform status quo spending patterns.

That logic follows, as night follows day.