Favorite place in Ramsey? Least favorite place in Ramsey?

An exercise in defining our collective desires for the 2008 comprehensive plan.

Ask yourself two questions, "What is my favorite place in Ramsey?" "What is my least favorite place in Ramsey?"

It will be worthwhile.

My guess, question 1, everyone, like me, will say, "Home."

That tells you - work like crazy to protect what you have. If "home" is the most favorite, Ramsey is a community without any real outside attractions, and that is not going to change. Planner desires aside, don't expect it.

Then least favorite. I can guess there for most people. I will list three, in order:

"Highway 10."

"Town Center [except Coborns, which is worth something]."

"The stoplight at Sunwood and Ramsey Blvd."

Those living elsewhere would have "Highway 47" as an alternative worst place.

So what should objectives be? Especially with the mortgage market for borderline purchasers now in flux?

My guess - my own aim - move to protect home and hearth. Home is where the heart is.

Should a comprehensive plan primarily accomodate housing development trends, or be driven by existing resident likes and dislikes and hopes?

Developers will chase the short-term dollar. In Ramsey, if Ramsey offers profitable short-term dollars, and elsewhere if the crabgrass is greener on the other side of the fence.

So how should that affect our comprehensive plan? I went to Coborns Friday, heading west on Hwy. 116 past Ramsey Blvd., making the first left on the road that intersects Sunwood east of City Hall. Driving through the open spaces there with a view of City Hall as I approached Sunwood, it struck me that there were not earthquakes or volcanic eruptions because the project was stalled and soured.

Whether mortgage money in the future or construction loans in the future will be as available for shared-wall ventures is uncertain. But should we care?

Ramsey traditionally has been single family, large lot, well and septic system growth. And many find their homes in that context comfortable.

Why bow to dense growth? Who needs it?

If Ramsey does not try something stupid with the Town Center site but instead does a wait-and-see standstill for five years, will that be a problem?

Not to me.

Doing that would fit my view of smart - when saying "smart growth."

Restraint has always seemed better than irrational exuberance.

So who or what will fuel compromise in the comprehensive plan this time? Not a runaway mortgage lending market. That seems certain. The days have changed for that segment, or it appears so now.

My guess, the "property rights" rhetoric and northend landholders seeing how the land was cashed out at Town Center and envisioning easy millions for themselves, if that happens, could be a force. My impression, so far however, is that is not happening. I think the reality is generally recognized - that in northern Ramsey 2-1/2 acre would sell, but higher land yields from dense development there is not a realistic expectation. And high-end housing expectations, under the BIG power line, seems to me to be unrealistic and I expect those owning land there might share the view that if they are to cash out their land it will require realistic expectations and not dreaming and "Gee, I wish ...". The BIG powerline is not moving. It is there so deal with it, seems to be recognized by most in Ramsey.

The landholders in northern Ramsey were constrained to four-in-forty sit-and-wait regardless of whether they wanted to sit on green acre taxed land to wait and see.

Now I do not see any groundswell toward unrealistic expectations there. But I have heard it noted on QCTV that 2-1/2 acre growth for now is still off the table, while John Peterson got his sewer and water and lot density to the cornfield by Trott Brook along Hwy 5, and the opinion has been expressed that not all animals on Animal Farm appear equal.

So is sit and wait, north of Trott Brook the answer - sit and see if the hyped high density bubble bursting was big and permanent, or a burp? Will plannerspeak, retain its bias toward "density is good?" Even if the market decides it is not? Or will the market change the rhetoric? If the developers see shared-wall become less friendly an option for them; will the Metropolitan Council planner-staff hold their course or miraculously change tune as developers chase the market (if it leads away from high density)?

In effect, is it true the development interests control Met. Council? Do developers lead, or follow? They bow to the lending market, they have to, but if loan money dries up for owner-occupied shared-wall, and rental shared-wall becomes viable, will the Met Council position then be against owner-occupied housing, to keep a pro-density bias? How will the dynamics play out if lending shifts? Do the bankers ultimately call all the shots?

It has been alleged that developer expectations motivate Met Council. It has been denied.

Met Council then is not Met Council now. That makes it harder to say who's calling the shots.

All that is part of the story, but isn't a big aspect of the entire comprehensive plan imposition - we have to do it - we have no choice to simply say, "Ramsey declines" - isn't that developer driven?

And isn't that so, since the "plan" stands for "this is the set of criteria for which cities have to say yes to any developer who puts his project into what the plan allows," while the reality has been every proposal has been, recently at least, a PUD where, surprisingly, an effort is made to gain a density greater than the plan specifies for the land where it is situated - for the neighborhood?

I may be the only one seeing it that way. But the "plan" is a "have to say yes" collar a city is compelled by Met Council to put upon itself; and many established residents who really like "the neighborhood" as it is where they live in Ramsey, might prefer a base plan as a have-to-say-no measure, where neighbors to a planned change also can have an additional voice to say no to a particular development proposal disruptive to the neighborhood.

But that could stifle growth.

And isn't growth inevitable?

Some say so, but I don't believe it. Death is inevitable. Growth is "inevitable" if you are facing some agency with extended jurisdiction which stands on your throat and says, "Comply," as was done to poor Lake Elmo.

But at least they had the backbone to stand up and say they did not like it. I was saddened to see Lake Elmo lose in court. Local control seems fine to developers when land and development interests own control, but then when Lake Elmo sentiments arise, they get slammed to the wall in court, in costly litigation.

SO -- the ultimate question -- who owns/runs Met Council? There councilmembers are appointed and not elected. Always remember that. It is not democratic choice or representation at the board level there.

Has the developer fox gained control of that henhouse, as has been alleged, and in favor of keeping the positions appointed and not elected? I would feel that way if I were making tons of money from development. Wouldn't you? Why mess with elections?

This I know: Every apartment I've lived in there has always been noise through the walls, floor and ceiling, from adjacent unit(s). That is the one certainty I have about shared-wall, from personal experience. I did not like it.

Yesterday, it was Guardian reporting on worldwide financial market woes. Today, Pioneer Press reporting locally.

And it mentions Town Center.

This excerpt, from the full online Pioneer Press story, here. The excerpt is interspersed with observations and comment.

Local pain minimal from lending woes
Few banks hurt by subprime fallout

BY NICOLE GARRISON-SPRENGER
Pioneer Press
TwinCities.com-Pioneer Press

By the time Nicole Middendorf walked into her office Friday morning, her voicemail light was flashing and her e-mail box was full of messages from clients concerned about the safety of their investments.

On Thursday, the Dow fell 387 points after BNP Paribas of France said it was freezing three funds that invest in U.S. subprime mortgages. Financial-services stocks, in particular, took a big hit - even a few Minnesota-based companies suffered a decline.

Despite the market volatility, local financial experts like Middendorf, a financial adviser at Plymouth-based Strategic Financial Inc., are convinced that the credit fears that sparked Thursday's downturn are not as dire as recent reports make them seem.

"I think fears that financing has dried up are overblown," said Carol Clark of Minneapolis-based investment firm Lowry Hill. The economy remains strong, as does corporate cash flow - two important factors that did not exist leading up to the tech-boom bust at the turn of this century, she said.

You are in the business of advising people - you want to keep your customers - you can offer thoughts about where the future will go - the SEC is not severe on future projection standards, absent some parallel showing, such as with the analysts who were giving strong buy on Enron while flushing it from their own portfolios and their employers were doing the same with the firm's holdings, in the recent past. That level of wrong gets a sanction, but innocent error in guessing the future has to be generally tolerated. And Ms. Middendorf or Clark probably are not falsifying a thing, nor intentionally slanting their comments. They caution against overreaction. They speak in a context, one where most people think that emotion controls the yin and yang of behaviorial aspects of changes in the financial markets. Reason and analysis play a major role too, but emotion is a factor. And it is wise to discourage overreaction to what might be an Oct. 1987 change - but could be a 1929 crash. Only time will tell, but the impact can be worsened by loss of faith, and the analysts and advisors will all be saying have cause to expect the worse, or don't expect the worse, approach it rationally, try to analyze and not merely guess out of fear and go stash gold somewhere, etc. Locally:

"If you're talking about who owns the junk - no one knows," said Ben Crabtree, an analyst with Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. "But since the banks around here don't really do much in the way of subprime lending, I don't see a real significant impact."

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., the largest bank in Minnesota by market share, may have had the biggest exposure to subprime loans of any local bank. Over the past year or so, however, the bank has sold off many of those loans. A few weeks ago Wells Fargo announced it would no longer originate certain types of subprime loans.

Executives at St. Paul-based Bremer Financial Corp., the No. 4 bank in the state, say they've avoided the subprime market. Though they've beefed up their mortgage operations in the past year and a half, the company leans toward more-conservative loans.

The subprime shakeout might help banks by scaring off or weeding out other financial institutions that have competed fiercely with traditional banks lately for mortgages and other loans.

Am I wrong, in thinking that is a "Them, not us," kind of thing to be saying. And cold comfort.

Yesterday, Guardian reported worldwide numbers about central banks pumping liquidity into the financial trading markets - gross amounts reported without detail about specific central bank ways and means of "providing liquidity" when such a shockwave propagates. When the machine is tweaked here and there, the reporting has not analyzed any specifics of where "here" is, or "there."

Liquidity, was reported to have been injected into the markets promptly; with total amounts reported. But as with Town Center, you can pull on a rope if movement is too enthusiastic or fast. You cannot push on a string.

Next week will be interesting. The Pioneer Press continues:

"This is a liquidity crisis and banks, because of deposits, have much more stable liquidity than the nonbanks that raise money by creating these nonstructured finance instruments, all of which tend to incorporate some of the subprime junk," Crabtree said.

Nonbanks will find the cost of lending much more expensive than in the past. That will prompt them to raise rates, thus becoming less competitive. Some might opt to leave the market altogether.

If there is any fallout from the credit crunch locally, it's likely to be among small community banks loaning money to residential developers, Crabtree said.

That's because without the subprime borrowers, the number of potential buyers for the properties these developers are building has declined. Developers who aren't selling properties often find they can't pay their bills. Some, like the developer of the stalled Ramsey Town Center project off U.S. 10 in Ramsey, file for bankruptcy, leaving the banks that loaned them money in the lurch.

Yes but that is the essence of banking risk, that credit decisions will sour. Without the risk, is it banking?

I sure would love to see, if that last observation is true about which sector will bind up worse for now, if true - where exactly did all that central bank liquidity injection go? To the local mon-and-pop banks forming a consortium to lend to the Bruce Nedegaard - John Feges teams, or to Wall Street?

Details have not been reported, that would answer that. Probably combing over the Federal Reserve's website pages might have an answer, possibly not. It would surprise me greatly if the Fed says much about who gets the "liquidity" when it get pumped into "the system." Send an email if you see any of that reported anywhere. I will post about any facts of that kind called to my attention. I think it is a quite valid question. Whose bacon are they saving from being overcooked? I suppose benefits will trickle down. That always seems to be the thinking. But is it an effort for a rising tide to raise all boats, or are there locks and dams in the system to allocate the liquidity so some boats get raised much more than others?

Who gets their local congressperson to return email is not a uniform thing, and which bank or Wall Street player gets liquidity help probably also is non-uniform. At a guess. The new Greenspan guy, name starts with a "B", he is not sharing his thoughts with me or you. He works for bankers and the Federal Reserve is run by banks. It is a bankers' bank. Not that it's wrong or imprudent that it be so. But it is so. And Greenspan had that sign on his office wall, "The buck starts here." They print money. People accept what they print, because of what you can exchange it for. Is liquidity provided by the printing presses; or by buying treasury bonds on the bond market? It probably is both together, you increase money supply and do it by purchasing on the bond market. If you do not go to the bond market, how else do you distribute "liquidity?" Who to, and how?

In closing: Just as the awards for the Ramsey Town Center project in advance of the project hitting the market were wrongly thought out, then - it is equally wrong now making Town Center the poster child for failure in ways that are really nationwide in scope. It is an oversimplification to do that. Both statewide daily papers in the past have reported other stalled Twin Cities regional "smart growth" or planned growth projects.

"Smart growth," a recent planner-speak motto used in earlier Metropolitan Council shared-wall dense growth marketing effort, is only smart when the market says so, and it can be real dumb when the market says otherwise.

For now, the otherwise analysis of that last set of paragraphs controls - but the fan loading up with Pulte and D.R. Horton shared-wall housing is a phenomenon that is nationwide, and regional, but not solely a Ramsey thing.

And in fairness to the reporting, Town Center is not mentioned as an exception, it is mentioned as a good, general example. That's probably fair, since the paper had given it much attention recently.

Next week will likely, from the immediate financial markets perspective, be indeterminate.

A half year from now, "Did the housing market take its full hit, bottom out, and start a recovery," will still be uncertain. But the suggestions of a half-year's activity will be a better thing to forecast from than the ending days of trading, early August, while still in early August. If the trend is the friend, only the real trend is, not falsely perceived ones, and until recently, there was a housing sales slump, a foreclosure build-up, but not the precipitous thing seen in financial markets the last few days. Trending has been constant but less severe than the last few days would forecast.

Whatever the future, it is good to see local reporting of what was a worldwide trend, viewed from a local perspective.

However, I saw no great reassurance in the opinions mentioned or quoted.

Wait and see is, still, wait and see.

ANOTHER BLACK FRIDAY: Irrational pessimism?

Years ago the Greenspan speech used the "irrational exuberance" phrase and the markets went nuts. Now the markets are going nuts, so is it irrational pessimism?

Or the mayor's terms from years ago for Town Center skeptics - negative thinking?

Anyway, the markets worldwide went nuts. Guardian, for above photo [from Getty images], and this excerpt:

Global markets left reeling

David Teather, Ashley Seager and Justin McCurry in Tokyo
Friday August 10, 2007

There were further heavy losses on the world's financial markets today despite central banks stepping in with massive injections of cash for a second day running in the hope of restoring a sense of calm.

The FTSE 100 index in London saw £63bn wiped off leading shares as it closed 3.7% lower, losing 232.9 points to end the week on 6,038.3. It was the biggest one-day percentage drop in the City in almost four-and-a-half years and wiped out all of the gains made by the FTSE this year.

The world's central banks have now injected $323bn (£160bn) into the money markets over the past 48 hours, equivalent to a quarter of Britain's entire annual economic output.

The panic gripping investors has been building over several months, since problems first began to appear in the segment of the US mortgage market aimed at people on low incomes or with poor credit histories, the so called sub-prime market.

As interest rates have risen, so the numbers of people defaulting on those loans has gained pace and, due to the way debt is packaged up and sold on to other banks, the effects are now being felt throughout the financial system.

The complexity of the financial markets has only added to the sense of dread as investors have no idea which institutions own what debt, leaving the markets to be riven by rumour and counter-rumour.

"There is great uncertainty as to how far risks are spread within the financial system and exactly where the losses reside," said Paul Niven, at F&C Asset Management. "The market is trading on fear."

Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender in the US, added to the anxiety today when it warned of a shortfall in earnings because of the "unprecedented disruptions" in the mortgage and debt markets. Shares in the company dropped around 18%.

Washington Mutual, the leading American savings and loan firm also warned that it would be "adversely affected" by the mortgage market turmoil.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average on Wall Street dropped another 200 points in early trade, on top of the 387-point slump on Thursday, before clawing back some ground after the Federal Reserve in Washington ploughed another $16bn into the US financial system, hard on the heels of a $19bn injection early this morning. The Fed had injected $24bn into the markets the day before in the same way. The action is not uncommon for the Fed in its daily management of the money markets, but the size of the cash injections is unusually high.

In a statement, the Federal Reserve said it would "provide reserves as necessary to facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets".

Japan's central bank had earlier injected one trillion yen (£4.2bn) into the Tokyo market. At close of trade in Japan, the Nikkei 225 average had lost 2.4%. Hiroko Ota, the economy minister, said: "It is hard to tell how the sub-prime issue will affect the Japanese economy right now." The Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 2.9%. The central banks across Asia and in Australia also took action to calm their volatile financial markets.

Symptoms of the sub-prime crisis have been appearing with alarming frequency in recent days. Yesterday, the French bank BNP Paribas suspended trading in three of its funds with exposure to mortgage assets, while German banks discussed emergency measures to bail out rival IKB.

At the beginning of the week, Bear Stearns co-president Warren Spector resigned over losses in hedge funds because of the sub-prime fiasco.

Enough. Vikings play tonight, first string, first series of downs. Zygi will do well, probably, if the masses get their bread and circuses. Went to Coborns this afternoon - got some bread. Etc.

It is really hard to blame all of this on Town Center. I will not try. But there are those urban legends around, about the butterfly flapping its wings one way not another in Brazil causing El Nino, other coast ...

Are we seeing a downside of globalization? Are we seeing that economists liking the lingering rational markets modeling need to take up plumbing? Is "behaviorial finance" an answer, or just another buzzword?

It is a bleak picture. It affects us all. It is a severe wobble in the machine.

This may be the last Town Center post - except for any breaking news.

I have pretty much built a record of thinking - It was an unwise project, and the land could better have been conserved for commercial and industrial expansion - and jobs.

It was not.

Decisions were made. Met Council advocated growth and past councils opted for growth.

James Norman played a role, but does so no longer.

Moving City Hall without a referendum is something I condemn; but it's done, and is water under the bridge.

The market now is a factor. Perhaps bad goals and anticipation played into a market that was a bubble that burst. Perhaps only market effects are being seen now. My guess is it's always been a sow's ear, with the housing bubble posing a possibility it might be quickly built out and for a very brief instant, appear to be a silk purse. The bubble burst and the Nedegaard effort did not move quickly - the saturation effect for townhomes being a factor neither City, Met Council, nor Nedegaard could overcome. And now, the trend is our friend. It shows the bubble's burst; the future is uncertain with "subprime" now being a nasty word, and how such housing that looked profitable in 2004 - 2005 will fare in the future when mortgages may be harder to get, is the big uncertainty in any planning.

I think the city is right to hold to the plan they negotiated with the Nedegaard interests - that the bank and any new buyer would enter with that being the floor everyone stands upon. If there are modifications, that is negotiation, and I trust staff to negotiate well, from now on and that is trusting on hiring a better city administrator than past office holders - which is a judgment opinion and a hope.

Marketing it as "shoppes and restaurants" was false, but also is water under the bridge. For now, as Patrick Trudgeon has stated, the anticipation is 2400 housing units total, for 322 acres; with commercial and park development a part of things.

Calling the PACT school, the Medical Examiner, City Hall and the Ramp "commercial" cheapens things. A better approach would be to negotiate that a housing-nonhousing split can be viewed as triggering a phase II, but that there a strongly restrictive definition of "commercial" will have to apply. And TIF for that is questionable.

But lying now about what is "commercial" rather than expressly changing and lessening the deal is dishonest and simply should not be done. The senior housing - it is to be housing - each unit counting as an additional unit; as with ACCAP.

TIF for any housing, as with the ACCAP proposal, is unwise and a burden on existing Ramsey taxpapers and uncalled for, although it appears a done deal.



All of that said, the focus for the future has to be the Comprehensive Plan.

And Town Center is only a part of that Plan. For now, it is not the major part. That is because the greater uncertainty lies in what the remainder of the plan will be.

Ms. Steffen has stated at one recent session, where Sen. Jungbauer was a keynote speaker; that we should anticipate no major changes from the last comprehensive plan.

That is a statement, but ambiguous. However, she spoke at a work session where Met Council planning staff attended; and that situation will be reviewed in a later post.

That session, and the statement she made recently, that "no major changes" should be anticipated, does help define expectations from that direction. Presumably staff there, within those bounds as vague as they are, from Ramsey and Met Council shall be in contact and working within those parameters.

The major question is what "property rights" advocacy means, and is it good or bad for Ramsey? There can be an agreement on conservative spending, eschewing subsidy, again a somewhat vague term, while "property rights" might mean a range of things to a range of people.

Starting with staff notes from the RAMSEY3 process, and from the "no major changes" expectation, we can have some view of where the city is headed.

One aspect left open in the tardy but ultimate last comprehensive plan - environmental regulation and effects - can now be better defined because there have been wetland surveys, areial mapping for topographic data, more wells, and a better underatanding of the factual situation needed to ground a more exact Comprehensive Plan for water, be it surface, ground or drinking/household supplied, by the City, from the existing wells and/or the river, and treated via a new capital spending binge. How that water treatment cost will be allocated, when it is the new growth that will be its cause, is a question of fundamental fairness that existing residents have a stake in formulating in ways that fairly tax their property.

The earlier town center mantra, "The Developer Shall Pay" should not be abandoned or shelved in the 2008 City of Ramsey Comprehensive Plan formulation process.

If there are profits to be chased by the crabgrass contingent; they, not us, should bear their profit-seeking risks. ENTIRELY. There should be no risk or cost shifting to existing taxpayers. That would be a market distortion favoring marginal or unproductive development; and the market should exist to weed out the illadvised or undercapitalized adverturers. We, the existing taxpayers, should not subsidize those landholders and developers wanting windfall profits. Neither by cost shifting for sewer-water capital expenditures arising only because of accomodating growth, nor by forced hookups or special assessment fees imposed in lieu of or in the absence of forcing a hookup. Ultimately, it is the special assessment that hurts; not the forcing of hookups. Hence, protective Comp. Plan language should be to stiffle wrongful impositions of such assessments against existing homeowners who already have invested their own capital in wells and septic systems for their properties. They should not have to pay twice, simply because they had to install and maintain and upgrade priviate systems when their homes were built or purchased, and municipal sewer and water adjacency to the properties did not exist.

Existing homeowners in such a class have a common interest in assuring that the new comp plan will recoginze them as stakeholders entitled to a vote in a majority voting process when others propose the routing of sewer and/or water piping past their homes. Without that, the charter and plan can say one thing, and state statutes and Met Council unter its Land Planning Act jurisdiction can say another; and the threat faced is that the courts will side with the larger forces saying their interests trump local control and local concerns - once the pipes are in the ground and people are saying they do not want to hookup OR be assessed for something that was done to benefit the profit-making of others.

Hence, the protection that should be in the comp plan is an intent by Ramsey, blessed by Met. Council approval, that existing people - as a local right and power, can force the holding of a vote on any future proposed routing past their single-family homes and properties with each property along the proposed route being a stakeholder with a vote.

More on that concept. More on the Met Councilmember's visit earlier at a work session. But not in this post. In the future.

Planning probably, ultimately, is better than no planning. But unfair planning is a lesser goal than fair planning. And the core measure of fairness is the short term - to ten year enhanced tax burden that planning for growth will impose on those now in Ramsey. What better measure is there? I know of none, when "fair planning" is the only proper goal? Who else would you be "fair" to? What else would be wholly fair to Landholders and developers wanting a windfall profit via subsidizing taxes, than to hold them instead to a fair profit, in line with not shifting any of their risk or cost to the general taxpaying Ramsey public now living in the City?

What's fairer than that? Nothing. Having the many subsidize the gaining of greater wealth by a few is inherently unfair. There's no two ways about it.

If the landholder-developer plans and hopes cannot survive the test of a fair and unbiased unsubsidized market, then their plans and hopes are not good - not good for them, and not good for the rest of us - and a rational person in their place, held to follow the market, will do what the market allows as profitable, and avoid what the market suggests as a risk and cost beyond anticipated benefits, and hence a bad plan or deal. But let the market work without distortions and without subsidy. Do not bias the market to favor crabgrass.

A Congressional housing foreclosure hearing, in Minneapolis

Rather than reinvent the wheel, here is a long excerpted post from an Internet site:

Congress to Hold Financial Services Hearing in Twin Cities Minneapolis --

Congressman Keith Ellison (D-Minneapolis) announced today that the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Financial Services will hold an official hearing entitled "The Effect of Predatory Lending and the Foreclosure Crisis on Twin Cities Communities and Neighborhoods" on Thursday, August 9th from 6:00 - 8:00 p.m., at the Minneapolis Central Library (300 Nicollet Mall).

The hearing is open to the public. The goal of the hearing is for the committee to hear from advocates, community associations, industry and local representatives with unique perspectives of the foreclosure and housing situation in the Twin Cities. While communities all over the country are struggling with foreclosures, predatory lending, and issues associated with the sub-prime lending crisis, Minneapolis and St. Paul are emblematic of a larger, nationwide problem.

In fact, in the first three months of this year, there were 678 foreclosure sales in the city of Minneapolis, an increase of more than 100% in just one year. Furthermore, more than half of these foreclosures were located in North Minneapolis, an area particularly hit hard by predatory lending and foreclosure policies.

"I am proud to have the Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, on which I serve, here in the Twin Cities to see first-hand the impact these practices have had on our neighborhoods.” Congressman Ellison stated. The hearing's testimony and transcript will be a part of the official record, which members may use as they develop, discuss and debate predatory lending legislation in the coming months.


WHAT: House Financial Services Committee Official Hearing "The Effect of Predatory Lending and the Foreclosure Crisis on Twin Cities Communities and Neighborhoods"


WHEN: Thursday, August 9th, 2007 - 6:00 - 8:00 P.M.


WHERE: Minneapolis Central Library (300 Nicollet Mall)


WHO: Chairman Barney Frank Congressman Keith Ellison
Lori Swanson, Minnesota Attorney General

R.T. Rybak, Minneapolis Mayor

Chris Coleman, St. Paul Mayor,


A Minneapolis Star Tribune April 24, 2007 article called the Minneapolis foreclosure rate an "epidemic."

This problem is not limited to one city or neighborhood, a 2006 study by the city of St. Paul found that there are more than 800 abandoned buildings in the city, the highest number since the city began keeping such records in the 1980s.

Foreclosure rates are not unique to the Twin Cities. The nation-wide default rate among borrowers holding sub-prime mortgages has risen to 12.6%.

In the interest of fair disclosure, that site has a badge showing its political alignment:



With that said, I believe my concern about housing and Ramsey Town Center is a universal concern regardless of where on the spectrum one is - myself close to these people keeping the Wellstone memory alive; and Matt Look, Ramsey Councilmember who is a supporter of GOP State Senator Mike Jungbauer. Each of us wants to see the Town Center survive the present housing slump, and each of us wants to see it done without overburdening present Ramsey resident-taxpayers. Without subsidy, a success within the market, measured by the market.

--------
That will take time.

In the interim, the hearing might be a start toward some federal effort at reducing the stress on individuals facing home foreclosures - or townhome purchasers facing selling with negative equity because builders are still selling off inventory at a discount.

The excerpted site suggests our Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann will be a nonparticipant in this hearing. I hope not. She sought and obtained the committee assignment and this would be an opportunity for her to give the hearings a suburban perspective - with our Planning Director, our mayor, or Bob Close as a hearing witness.

My vote for a hearings witness - Bob Close could discuss how the situation looked to him two-three years ago, and how it looks to him now. He could dissect the changes perhaps better than anyone else - he was NOT a Nedegaard insider, he got the award, he can opine about how times can change.

AND - he is one person I would like to hear from, now, publicly, about his perspective on events, chance and planning. Wouldn't you?

A bucolic open rural landscape, somewhere between Anoka and Elk River.