[Mpls] 'Citizen Participation' still a myth; 'Activist Participation' not...

[Steve Cross]

Mr. Atherton's factual assertions are substantially at odds with those 
who in Prospect Park who observed them.  Most have been brought up by 
him before and refuted before.  For that reason, I'm not going to go 
into, again, section and verse on everything that he is wrong about.  
However, there are a few that merit response.

Mr. Atherton said:

>In my neighborhood the NRP invested close to 50% of $3,000,000 in 
>a school and community center that the School Board wanted to sell 
>and $600,000 of it did go to Brighton.
>

What Mr. Atherton, somehow, fails to mention is that while the School 
Board did TRY to close Pratt School, it remains open and the investment 
in it of $1,500,000 in neighborhood NRP funds (and an untold amount of 
sweat by most of the neighborhood's members) remains secure.

And what he also fails, somehow to mention is that the investment that 
went to Brighton resulted in the removal of a derelict light-industrial 
building and several collapsing houses and their replacement with a 
modern and successful town-home development and the award-winning 
restoration of an historic neighborhood house.  And, as long as I'm 
defending the neighborhood, I'll also defend Brighton.  Any neighborhood 
that finds Brighton interested in developing in their neighborhood can 
count themselves as very fortunate.  I worked with Brighton and found 
them easy to work personally with an interested in working with our 
neighborhood.  There willingness to work with us is testified to by the 
same development that Mr. Atherton impliedly bad-mouths in his post.  
Brighton had completed the plans for the development of the property 
when the opportunity presented itself to move a house to one of the lots 
and restoring it.  Brighton could have easily, and correctly, have said, 
"Our plans are complete, sorry."  Instead, they invested personal time 
to change their plans to allow the house to be moved and restored.  Just 
as Mr. Atherton is not correct in his regular disparagement of the 
people who live in his own neighborhood, he is also not correct in his 
disparagement of Brighton Development.

Mr. Atherton also said:

>The problem is that we have no way of knowing how much of
>this money was squandered and how much of it ended up back
>in the hands of people making decisions, because there are
>no real checks and balances for NRP processes.
>  
>

I really, really, resent this.  The imputation of people making personal 
self-dealing profits out of the NRP program is just outrageous!  
PPERRIA's books are open as are NRP's records.  And all years that we 
expended NRP money were audited by Minnesota's state auditor.  And all 
those audits are available for public inspection.  (It needs to be noted 
that for some of the years in question that Mr. Atherton was on the 
PPERRIA Board of Directors.  And, for those years the State Auditor 
mailed him his own personal copies of the audits.  (This was not a 
personal favor to Mr. Atherton.  It's SOP for the Auditor to mail copies 
of audits to the Board of Directors.  That's because it's any Board's 
duty to clean things up if problems are found.)  You can be sure that 
had anything untoward been found by the State Auditor, that Mr. Atherton 
would be the first to be waiving the audits like a bloody flag.  It also 
needs to be pointed out that in the past few weeks that Mr. Atherton 
requested copies of all audits and they were made available to him -- 
including the years prior to when he was on PPERRIA's Board.  Again, had 
the audits even hinted at there being anything wrong -- including the 
self-dealing that Mr. Atherton accuses us of -- that you would have 
heard about it in his most recent postings.)

There are other, lesser, problems with what Mr. Atherton has to say.  
However, I'm sure that the tone of all of his prior posts provide 
adequate reason to disregard everything he has to say.

Steve Cross
Prospect Park (Who happened to be the PPERRIA president for a couple of 
the years and went through the audits by the State Aduditor.)