Government Arrogance

Last night I attended the Waite Park Community Council meeting. One of the hot topics over the last few months has been the opposition to the Stinson Parkway bike path. Three neighborhood Boards have formally voiced their opposition of the idea of a bike path down Stinson parkway on several grounds. All three have voiced concerns about safety, loss of trees, and loss of green space. These concerns have formally gone to the Citizens Advisory Board, which didn’t pass the motions from the neighborhood groups. This results in basically saying “we don’t care what you think, and will go ahead with our plans any way”. Who are these people serving?
The next level to bring these points to is the Park Board, which has been playing a game of cat and mouse with the issue. The Park Board hasn’t taken a formal position on this, because it is at the stage of being only the recommendation of the advisory council. However, the Park Board has proven itself not reactive to the concerns of the neighbors in similar situations, so there is a lot of mistrust that they will listen this time.
The straw that broken the Minneapolis Shadow’s back was the response received by the representative from the Park Board at this meeting last night whose name is Nick. When pressed with the question on why the recommendations of the neighborhood groups got just dismissed, he responded with “the Advisory Board decided they wanted to move forward, but the opinions are noted in the meeting minutes”. Well that does a lot of good. He also stated “we [the Park Board] are working towards the greater good and know what is best”. Totally outrageous! Government 101 states …. Government for the people, not government knows what is better that you. We are talking about a bike path loop of just a few city blocks long, that doesn’t really fill in the missing link of the Grand Rounds, and there is a lot of opposition from the people affected by the action. They are talking about putting in a bike path that is going over seven or more intersections, poses safety issues, takes mature tress away, takes green space away, and cuts into people’s property. These people’s government is basically telling them that they don’t care what they think. Sounds to me like there is something a major miss here.