Not all planners are bad. Some are and can equal the lowest common denominator [aka hardiest Crabgrass varieties] among city administrators: " "You talk to kids in school now, and they either don't know or don't care who he is," said Sarah Morton, Sauk Centre's city planner. And it's not just the kids, she added: "I tried to read 'Main Street.' I start it every winter. I still can't get through that book." The ouster really comes down to money, said Vicki Willer, the Sauk Centre city administrator. The interpretive center, dedicated in 1975 by U.S. Sen. Hubert Humphrey, was simply no longer the best use of that land." "

Then there's the townfolk. The extended headline - This link. Babbitts abound. Many consult. Some come out of Indiana.
North metro towns have a homegrown share; and then some. My suggestion is the one Strib-quoted planner-idiot should try The Brothers K. Strib's item continues:

"A lot of people felt the government didn't need to hold that prime property and it should be in private hands," Willer said. "We were getting a lot of push on that.

"We really heard it more from the business community: 'We need more people to contribute to our tax base. Spread the load.' The City Council would hear about it, I would hear about it. We struggled for many years with the decision to sell it."

Sauk Centre has a deal in principle with Oppidan Inc., an Excelsior-based developer specializing in big-box retail, fast-food restaurants and other franchise outlets.

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Something in that Sauk Center situation reminds me for some reason of Darren Lazan's hot-shot deal for the Town Center McDonalds.

Build that tax base. Block that kick. Win that war. And if you have any thought Babbits are absent from county boards, you don't live where I do. Babbits, Big Mac attacks, hand in glove.

Awaiting big box retail is so grounded in Americana that they made a movie.

God bless the tax base. And those that promote it's growth via propagating root runners.


____________UPDATE____________
This link. And this. Time isn't helping us. Time isn't hurting us. There is the old saying about nine women each with a month, and not that way producing a baby. Put another way: Peristalsis cannot be speeded up. How many taxpayer purchased studies are needed to prove that?

And, what? More mischief about the phony Christian school relocation begetting infrastructure spending of tax dollars leading to the kiting of the value of the raw land? Crabgrass prospering? Given the generous watering? What?