Doyle reports on a community meeting in
Minneapolis called to discuss the routing of the proposed Southwest Light Rail
project, which (if built), will take commuters from downtown Minneapolis
through some of the city’s southwestern suburbs.
There is a lot not to like among the facts
Doyle packs into the short article that leads the paper’s Metro section this
morning. It’s tough to know where to
begin, and the headline on the web version, “Southwest
light-rail gripe session stirs some anger,” is as good a place as any.
The “gripe session” meeting was called “to
help calm critics” in the wealthy enclave of Kenwood, which—not coincidentally—is
the permanent home of Minnesota’s Democrat Governor, Mark Dayton. (Minnesota’s Democrats style themselves DFL—Democrat-Farmer-Labor.)
The Governor’s former neighbors are
apparently whipped up into a good-old-fashioned NIMBY (not in my back yard)
frenzy. To quote Mongo from Blazing
Saddles, the dispute has “got to do with where choo-choo go.”
Not near them, seems to be the Kenwood
consensus. Doyle writes of the Governor’s
former
neighbors,
A common argument of Kenwood residents opposed to
plans for running the line through their neighborhood, one of the city’s more
affluent, is that it won’t provide enough service to poorer communities.
Of course. Mass transit is a poverty-relief program, so
why would you run trains in areas where rich people could hear or see them? It makes no sense.
The Kenwood meeting was facilitated by
consultant Dan Kramer of the firm Grassroots Solutions.
As Doyle reports,
The decision to pay Grassroots for “facilitating”
public meetings grew out of closed-door strategy sessions this fall involving
Dayton, a DFLer, Met Council officials and leading DFL legislators in response
to opposition to the project.
Notice who is conspicuous by their
absence: Republicans. Democrats, exclusively, got together—behind closed
doors—to figure out what to do about their difficulties in selling their
Democrat-developed mass-transit project to Democrat voters living in Democrat
neighborhoods. As Doyle reports,
Some of the most vocal critics are DFL
activists in the corridor area, who urged Gov. Mark Dayton to intervene.
Intervene he did. And the solution? Use taxpayer funds to hire a public relations
firm. And not just any public relations
firm, as Doyle reports about Cramer and his firm,
He’s a former aide to Sen. Paul Wellstone, and the
firm works for prominent labor unions and DFL politicians.
Maybe it’s just me, but if
Gov. Dayton and his fellow Democrats are having difficulty selling the this light-rail
project to the Governor’s wealthy, liberal neighbors, perhaps they should not
be using taxpayer money to resolve an intra-party squabble.
Cramer’s firm is being
paid $22,000 by the government agency Met Council to facilitate a series of
public meetings along the route and judging by the headline, he’s off to a
shaky start. Minnesota boasts a plethora
of well-financed, left-leaning advocacy groups who support mass transit. I’m sure any number of these would be happy
to facilitate such meetings for free.
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