Heads Up For January 6, 2010 Park Board Meeting
HEADS UP FOR THE JANUARY 6, 2010 PARK BOARD MEETING
The regular MPRB meeting will be held at 5:00 pm on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 at Park Board Headquarters, 2117 W. River Road. For the meeting agenda and other information, go to the Park Board's website minneapolisparks.org.
The January 6 Park Board meeting is the first regular meeting for 2010. There will be four new commissioners making their debuts at this meeting: Brad Bourn, John Erwin, Anita Tabb and Liz Wielinski. Five commissioners are reelected incumbents: Bob Fine, Carol Kummer, Jon Olson, Scott Vreeland and Annie Young.
The board will be voting on a resolution presumably written by Nikki Carlson for Bill Hawks of Crown Hydro and submitted to the board at the December 2, 2009 meeting by Commissioner Jon Olson.
The resolution, which contains a number of false assumptions, was designed to get the Park Board to buy out Crown Hydro and assume responsibility for a risky, over-hyped and over-lobbied hydro power project.
Of all the Park Board commissioners who have voted on Crown Hydro agenda items since 2004, only three commissioners have consistently supported Crown Hydro: Bob Fine, Carol Kummer and Jon Olson.
The six commissioners who have opposed Crown Hydro are Rochelle Berry-Graves, Walt Dziedzic, John Erwin, Vivian Mason, Scott Vreeland and Annie Young.
Since 2004, Crown Hydro has been the subject of many Park Board discussions, studies, reports, presentations, letters and open time speeches. The Park Watch website www.mplsparkwatch.org has ten pages of postings devoted to Crown Hydro. For six years, staff has devoted an egregious number of hours to this controversial project. If this project had legitimate merit and was without risk, it would have been approved long ago.
It is time for closure. The Crown Hydro resolution should be voted down by the new board at the January 6 meeting.
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MPRB meetings are broadcast live from 5-9 p.m. on the City of Minneapolis Government Meeting Channel 79 on Comcast cable and online at www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/webcasts.
The regular meetings are rebroadcast on Channel 79 at 1 p.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesdays. Webcasts for the recent two months are posted two to five business days after the meeting and are available for viewing at "Webcast Archives" on the site above.
Arlene Fried Co-founder of Park Watch