[Mpls] People4Parks

[wmmarks]

Council Member Barbara Johnson's People4Parks is the saddest local 
political development I've seen lately. *Less than five weeks until the 
election, *several DFL council seats wobbly, *the Park Board in complete 
dissarray, *the NRP in tough straights, *the library board with a huge 
burden, *the school board unable to contend with its failures, *two 
DFLers going at it for mayor.

It's significant that Barbara Johnson, daughter of Alice Rainville, 
related to John Derus, decades close to Walt Dzeidzic began this 
push--or is that putsch? They are intimately involved in the life of De 
La Salle High School. Still, it looks like Wiley Coyote trying to grab 
for the last tuft of grass while he's already off the edge of the cliff.

The text of CM Barbara Johnson's email to me has me asking the musical 
questions: 'what does independent park board' mean to Ms. Johnson? What 
does strong mean?

There are a few terribly earnest souls out there willing to sit through 
contentious park board meetings and take notes. They post them on this 
forum. Some responders get their feathers all ruffled (I've been accused 
of this, though not necessarily in terms of the parks) and quack around, 
some provide useful commentary to a thousand people who can vote in a 
city of how many registered voters?

It would be hard to deny that the MPRB has behaved shabbily towards the 
populace in providing meeting minutes, budgets, plans they are working 
through, progress made. The park system is much too big to wing it with 
the paper/internet work.. This, in turn, requires that the park board be 
able to define the logic behind initiatives. From Ms. Johnson's post I 
get the idea that insisting that the park board clean up its reporting 
system would be a bad thing. I also get the feeling that justifying how 
public money is used on a day to day basis would be a bad thing.

Have a it, CM Johnson, but no matter who gets elected, it's still 
incumbent on them to clean up the park board's act.

WizardMarks, Central