[Mpls] Park Board to hire Dairy Queen at Lake Harriet?

[Chris Johnson]

Anderson, Mark (GE Infrastructure) wrote:

>Mark Anderson replies:
>What are you saying here, Chris?  You wax on about Theodore Wirth's vision for our parks, and I was waiting for your climax: where you explain the grave danger to this utopian vision.  Apparently this is all about giving DQ the concession at Lake Harriet?  That gives up the community-oriented parks we have?  
>
>I don't understand, Chris.  I think the main result of out-sourcing the concessions would be that the park system could collect more cash than their current inefficient and poorly managed yields.  At the top of your e-mail you basically accuse the Park Board of hiding theft at the concession stands.  Then at the bottom, you defame the Board for giving up day-to-day management.  I'd think you would celebrate taking the management away from the Board.
>
>Also, why do you have an emotional attraction to the concession stands being run by the Park Board?  I can understand your concern with losing the benefits of our park system.  Mpls does have a great park system.  I would miss it too, if we lost all the green space.  But the concession stands?  Who cares who runs them?  They are already the exception to the green space, perhaps an unavoidable blot on the rest of the parks.  But if we have to have them, let's at least make money on them.
>
>Mark V Anderson
>Bancroft
>  
>

Good questions, Mark.  The problem is simply my inability to write as 
clearly and eloquently as I wish I could.

A DQ concession at Lake Harriet would not be the end of the world for 
the parks, not by half.  Dairy Queen is reasonably well-run local 
business, as far as I know.  I've often been a customer of theirs over 
the past years.

But the problem is larger and more subtle.  The current park policy, as 
it has been for nearly a hundred years, is to have no commercial 
enterprise or advertising in the parks.  As a result, the parks have a 
certain quality to them that is hard to quantify, but is obvious enough 
that when the suggestion that a Dairy Queen franchise at Lake Harriet 
arose 3 years ago, there was widespread outcry among the public.  That 
people have a hard to articulate and visceral reaction does not mean it 
is an invalid concern.

One clear and present danger to the parks is that a majority of the 
commissioners and a significant number of the staff are focused on 
priorities that are not in line with this vision of community-oriented 
parks.  Instead, they are variously focused on increasing their own 
political power, enlarging their own pocketbooks,  promoting their 
single pet projects or just keeping their heads down to avoid the wrath 
of their politically-motivated superiors.  Instead, they engage in 
behavior that is unethical and breaches their fiduciary responsibility 
to the tax payer.

Running a concession stand is not rocket science.  Running it 
efficiently does take some management and accounting skills, which 
apparently the Park Board "forgot" to apply.  Does it make sense to hire 
a manager responsible for all park concessions who is obviously 
qualified and experienced in running such retail operations?  Yes.  Does 
it require that each concession be subcontracted out to people who may 
have such qualifications?  No.  I will grant that out-sourcing is 
probably a better idea than continuing to lose money.  However, the loss 
of money due to lack of cash management systems to prevent pilfering 
from the till, and the inability for commissioners to get straight 
answers on profits and losses at concessions due to poor accounting 
practices points out serious problems within the organization regardless 
of who is running the concessions.

Keeping the books accurately is something that must be done no matter 
who runs the show.  There is simply no excuse whatsoever to not have 
good accounting.  This is all well standardized, thoroughly taught 
accounting practice.  Frankly, either the superintendent is suppressing 
the real, accurate accounting data, or heads should be rolling in the 
accounting department.  Accounting is a subject about which I have some 
fair amount of knowledge and skill, so I will repeat:  There is NO 
EXCUSE for the sloppy, inaccurate and incomplete accounting that appears 
to be the case.  If the appearances are wrong, and the books are good, 
who is keeping those numbers from commissioners like Rochelle Berry 
Graves who has repeatedly asked for them?

But back to who runs the concessions.  You appear to have missed, and 
perhaps I was too subtle despite mentioning it twice:  historically the 
parks ran the concessions as a nice service to park visitors and AS A 
WAY to give Minneapolis youth jobs.  They were not designed nor run as a 
big profit making center, although in fact, they mostly broke even or 
came out ahead.  And this plays to the city as a whole system topic that 
I've mentioned before and alluded to in my posting -- community fabric 
and all that.

If we as citizens really want to have a quality community and address a 
lot of the problems we face, we need to look at the big picture as well 
as the details.  We need to have the Park Board working with the MPS 
schools, and working with the Libraries, and with the City, and with 
others, to move things in the right direction.  We need to address 
large, intransigent problems systemically.

Here's a contrived example:  What's one of the direct causes of crime?  
Gang rivalries.  What's a factor in  young men joining gangs?  Lack of 
better examples, lack of hope, lack of opportunities, lack of jobs.  
What were a couple of Theodore Wirth's missions for the parks?  
Providing safe parks accessible to all citizens equally regardless of 
economic status, and providing good opportunities for children to learn 
and work in a safe, positive environment.  Can good, safe parks and lots 
of summer park jobs for teenagers solve all the crime problems, or all 
of the gang problems?  No, but it would help.  That's why the Park Board 
has to be a part of the bigger solutions, and work in cooperation with 
all the other parties.  Attacking things disjointedly and piecemeal is 
unlikely to ever meet with resounding success.

So what's this got to do with DQ in the park?  Again, some commissioners 
are not working on the greater good of the city, nor the greater good of 
the parks.  They are active roadblocks to us, as a citizenry, getting to 
the place where we actively have success in solving city-wide problems.

What's worse is, they are spending tax payer dollars on questionable 
projects, often to the benefit of their friends and associates.  Buying 
the HQ building put a large chunk of tax payer money right into Sherm 
Malkerson's pocket.  My best information tells me that Malkerson and 
Fine have known each other since childhood -- attending the same schools 
and synagogue, growing up in the same neighborhood.

It's reasonable to do business with people who you know -- but it's not 
reasonable to do so ONLY because you know them, and worse, try to hide 
that fact from the public.  The decision to buy a new HQ building should 
be based on sound rationale and good financial data, not on the ability 
to enrich a friend.

There are instance after instance of this kind of inside baseball, 
mutual back-scratching kind of activity going on with the Park Board.  
Are some of the things that look wrong actually perfectly innocent?  
Probably.  But there's enough of a pattern to be sure that many are not 
completely innocent and honest.

I could go on with example after example, but will stop here.

The simple points are these:
+ Outsourcing operation (not just management) of the concessions is just 
one link in a chain of questionable decisions.

+ Outsourcing operation of the Lake Harriet concession to a Dairy Queen 
franchisee, no matter how honorable a man he is and how well he runs the 
concession and his own DQ franchises, looks suspect after having 
suggested in the actual installation of a DQ at Lake Harriet which was 
then backed away from after great public outcry.

+ The Lake Harriet concession lost a large sum of money which was not 
well investigated and that my sources tell me was the result of gross 
mismanagement and employees taking cash from the till .  That's quite 
the accusation, you say, and if I had the kind of proof I wanted, I'd be 
talking to the district attorney.  But if you happen to know some young 
people who were teenagers in the Linden Hills or Fulton neighborhoods in 
2000-2001, why don't you ask them?  Apparently quite a few of them knew 
through their own grapevine what was going on at the Lake Harriet 
concession.  If you find one who confirms it, ask them if they want to 
go talk to the police, and swear to it in a court of law.  I think you 
might find the snag there.

+ The Parks have turned away from their mission and vision of providing 
all that they could to all of the citizens and all of the youth of 
Minneapolis.  They have instead focused on more exclusive, expensive 
activities, like an HQ building that drained millions of dollars from 
Park Board reserve and liability funds, and organized sports leagues and 
leasing very costly soccer fields at Ft. Snelling, while removing the 
nursery and greenhouses, allowing north side parks to run down (aren't 
there some swimming pools up there in desperate need of repair?), 
threatening to close wading pools and remove porta-potties, and reducing 
summers jobs for teenagers.

+ 5 Park Board commissioners have shown repeated contempt for their 
peers and the public through back room deal making and outright direct 
verbal insults, poor communication and abrogated process.

I perhaps have yet again avoided being clear, succinct and eloquent, but 
hope you can find the answers to your questions in my lengthy prose.  I 
do intend to sit down and take the many hours required to boil much of 
this down into better writing.  But if I am to respond to your message 
before the first day of spring -- just to put a target on the calendar 
-- I have to go with this.  Worrying about the Park Board is only one 
small item on my list of things to do, and it is not even in the top 
five or ten.  I do keep hoping to pique the interest of few others, so 
that we can share the burden.

Chris Johnson
Fulton