Followup to Park Board post

[naomikritzer]

I sent e-mail to John Erwin (who's running for an at-large seat) and to Jason Stone and Carol Kummer (district 5) to ask them some questions. I heard back from John Erwin at the crack of dawn (his e-mail was waiting when I got up -- apparently he dashed it off while getting ready for work) and from Jason Stone at 9 a.m. No response yet from Carol Kummer.

John Erwin's response was particularly useful; more .

I asked Erwin to clarify what he meant by his statement about how he planned to pay for additional projects. He wrote, "By saving money through collaborating with the City, U of M, School Board, and businesses to hold the line on property tax increases."

Here's his response:

We need to diversify what funds our system.  This means increased grant writing, increased private giving through the Parks foundation, increased collaboration, and increased efficiency - i.e. decreasing our own internal costs.

I can give you specific examples:

When I was on the Board before, I developed an agreement with the School Board to do the Policing in Schools through the Park Police.  Made sense since the PP were not as busy when kids were in school.  This resulted in an $800,000 increase in income per year to the Board.  Other examples that I worked on that resulted in increased savings/income to the Board are:  a) sharing police horses with the U of M (saved $150,000/year), partnering with the city to double tree planting ($200,000 per year savings), partnering with the city on skate board parks ($200,000/year), partnering with the city for winter rec in wirth park ($200,000 per year).  I came up with 4/5 of these to give a total of $1.4 million/year.  Given the total budget then, this translated into a 2.8% increase in revenue that displaced costs that would have been placed on the public.  All of these except the horse sharing have evaporated since I left the Board - i.e. a $1.25 million dollar loss.

Aside from this.  the PB has 1/2 of 1 grant writer for a $55 million budget.  I want to increase grant writers from that 1/2 to 3.  I am positive that these individuals would more than pay for themselves.  We have not been applying for many, many grants including stimulus money.  Stimulus money could have paid for existing repair needs. . . .lost opportunities.  Other agencies that could/would pay for park related activities include LCCMR (lottery money), EPA, Watersheds, and NIH.  When on the Board I also supported the sales tax effort to generate additional monies for parks through sales rather than property taxes.  Each of these would/do offset property tax needs/increases.  In addition, the Grand Rounds (parkway completion) would/will require collaboration and joint grants to receive direct state/federal funding to offset costs that would be placed on Minneapolis property taxes.

I was really impressed by his response; I'm still not sure that eliminating parking fees and activity fees is the best use of resources, but I was reassured from his response that he has really specific ideas about where to get money to do stuff. With local races, I like to hear specific, realistic ideas. (OK, it also helps when they're specific, realistic ideas that appeal to me.) I do think he ought to put this information up on his Facebook page, but whatever; it's a good enough response that I will probably vote for him.

I asked Jason Stone whether he did actually oppose Sea Salt (and if so, why, and does he still oppose its presence), and whether he could sum up what he sees as the major differences between him and Carol Kummer.

He said that when the issue of Sea Salt came up, the Park Board was privatizing services without having a policy or plan. He didn't oppose Sea Salt specifically, but wanted to slow down and "have a thoughtful approach to privatization of public services before going forward willy nilly." He likes Sea Salt and in fact just ate there.

On differences:

* Carol wants to make the Park Board a state entity, and levy a new property tax to fund it; Jason opposes both of these ideas. This is actually the current big controversy, but I haven't paid enough attention to the arguments to translate the code words. ("Park Board independence," for instance.)

* Carol was going to retire, but got back in the race when her prefered candidate backed out.

* Jason is interested in pursuing a bunch of projects; he lists starting recycling in parks, adding a small dog park, increasing volunteerism, traffic calming and crosswalk safety, developing a 3-year budget process to improve financial planning, and partnering with city leaders on campaign finance reform.

I e-mailed Carol Kummer with three questions -- (1) Does she have a website somewhere with a list of endorsements, as I'd like to see who her supporters are; (2) What does she see as the major differences between herself and Jason Stone; and (3) Can she give an example of a local political figure that she particularly admires or aspires to be like. No response yet. I'll update if I get one. FWIW, one of my biggest frustrations with previous Park Board commissioners is a lack of responsiveness -- I'm not some crank who calls them daily, mind you, so I expect a response to my once-every-few-years e-mail messages.

Comments

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these posts. I really appreciate the work you're doing. In fact, I'm dead impressed.

[st-writes.livejournal.com]

Thanks for all the info you're gathering and sharing. I'm glad to see you got a good response from John Erwin. He's my neighbor and a nice guy.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this research, and for posting it!

[eyelid.livejournal.com]

he lists starting recycling in parks, adding a small dog park, increasing volunteerism, traffic calming and crosswalk safety, developing a 3-year budget process to improve financial planning, and partnering with city leaders on campaign finance reform.


this is kind of disappointing. I'm leaning toward Stone in general, but this is the lamest list of "ideas" I've ever seen.