Birds and Parks

Two adjacent headlines at the top of Saturday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune metro section neatly encapsulate the status of modern government.  Oddly enough, both involve the under-construction new Vikings football stadium.

“Park Board now balks at 'Yard'” tells the take of a much-hyped public private partnership going sideways.  “Council flocks to birds' support” is the too cute headline for a story describing the   

Let’s take the latter, first.  Bird advocates are concerned that the design of the new Vikings football cathedral, with floor to ceiling windows may not be…how do we put this…bird friendly.

The government agency actually building the stadium—the Minnesota Sports Facilities Authority—doesn’t want to bust the budget to make the building more bird friendly.

So the Minneapolis City Council leapt into action, passing (via voice vote) a non-binding, symbolic, resolution in favor of birds.  As one city council member put it,

I believe this is a way to show the seriousness of the environmental issue at hand.

It’s all a very post-modern way of looking at the legislative function.

The other story involves government actually trying to do something.  The City of Minneapolis is working with a private developer to build a big development near the new Vikings stadium to revitalize the east end of downtown.  Unfortunately, no one bothered to check whether the City had the power to do the particular deal it did, first.

And now the Park Board is balking at the “fix” for papering over the legal niceties of the deal.  (It turns out that only the Park Board—not the City—can create a new city park.)

But why let the letter of the law get in the way of a much-needed public/private partnership that will make everyone so much money?