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Friday, August 25, 2017

Being one to not have an exceptionally sharp sense of politics, the hope is readers will. And that they will see through what to me is a confusion.

Met Council pow-wow with Anoka County Board, reported by local coverage, Strib online here. Final paragraph:

[Anoka Board Chairperson Rhonda] Sivarajah also took issue with some of the criteria used locally to score federal transportation funding, which includes proximity to poverty and racially concentrated poverty. “The average taxpayer, they’re going to say ... you should be looking at safety, congestion and is the infrastructure failing and does it need improvement,” she said. “I don’t think that they would say [prioritize] racially concentrated areas of poverty or other criteria within transportation funding.”

[ellipsis in original] First, federal decision making criteria fall outside of either of the two local jurisdictions.

Second, if proximity to racially concentrated areas of poverty is also to be viewed as a Met Council objective, then why exactly all the heated sweating there over the very costly Southwest Light Rail thing? The southwest metro seems racially concentrated enough, being a white concentrated high-affluence enclave, so what's going on, Met Council too sharing Rhonda's concerns that the feds are wrong and it's affluence that's to be served? Matt Look's 2.5 autos per family and such?

Again, it is all too unclear and obtuse in the view of one not attuned to political nuance, presuming it is nuance which is actually at play. May there be sunlight to lift the fog of misunderstanding, so that clarity may shine through. Indeed, the politics of Northstar were never fully fog-free, here. The sound sense and reason behind the entire Northstar thing was never wholly clear; and those not riding the thing must be equally dazed and confused, with their 2.5 rush-hour-auto households.

So is it a third point of confusion, explain to me again the justification for Northstar ever, especially with it halting in the thriving metropolis of Big Lake, outside of the seven county "Metro" jurisdiction? Readers should figure that out for themselves since I never could see a Northstar need - a want of those who also wanted a Ramsey stop for Northstar - yes, wants, but what of needs?