Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.The results are in for the municipal elections in New Brighton. A screen shot from the Secretary of State's election web page:
-- H. L. Mencken
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| Good heavens, we've been Menckened! |
If you want a free-spending, liberal city government, you should support Val Johnson for mayor and Mary Burg and Paul Jacobsen for city council. You will get a bigger government and can safely assume that your property taxes will rise, perhaps significantly, over the next two years.I stand by that prediction.
A few additional thoughts:
- For those who are jubilant at the election results, and there are rather a lot of people who feel this way, I would recommend that they attend the Truth in Taxation meeting on December 1. I'll publish more details on this meeting closer to the date. You may learn something. As an aside, it would be far better if the Truth in Taxation meeting happened a month before the election, not a month after.
- While I did support Gina Bauman for mayor, I have a lot of respect for Dave Jacobsen, a good man who did try to bring fiscal discipline to our community. I have little reason to believe his successor will be an improvement.
- It will be interesting to see what Paul Jacobsen, who was comfortably re-elected to his city council seat, does in the next session. Will he fight for fiscal discipline, or will he simply sign off on what comes down the pike? He's going to find that his vote doesn't matter very much any more, because the dynamics of the incoming council essentially guarantee that 3 of the five council members (incoming mayor Val Johnson and council members Mary Burg and Brian Strub) are going to vote the lefty, big government line. When Paul Jacobsen first came to the council, he had more conservative support, but he grew comfortable with going along with the liberals. Now that they no longer need his support, he may find his role diminished.
- Gina Bauman will remain on the council for the next two years. She won't be able to stop much of what is coming, but she can continue to offer principled opposition and document what is to come. That will be a valuable service when it comes time to evaluate the city council in the next election cycle.
- When property taxes rise, and they will now, it's going to hurt the senior citizen population in our community. My neighborhood was built in the mid-60s and there are still a few original owners in their homes on my street. I will be curious to see if some "For Sale" signs start to pop up in the next two years.
8 comments:
One obvious takeaway from these results is that whatever Gina Bauman was peddling, the voters wanted none of it. She, Moses and Erickson need to do some serious self-reflection to determine whether the problem is their messaging or simply their positions on the issues.
What they were peddling was fiscal restraint. If the choice is between spinach and candy, most people are going to choose candy. In two years, things may look very different.
Few things say 'progressive' like taxing the elderly out of thier homes and raising the rents on poor people.
But don't stop with taxing the elderly out of their homes. What you need to do is to decide that the apartment complex where a lot of them live is "blighted", tear it down, and build a new gold-plated "community center." Or even better, take a thriving neighborhood, condemn it to benefit a drug company, and let it become a collection of vacant lots. (New London, CT)
And whatever you do, don't spend tax revenue on effective policing. Nothing drives out elderly taxpayers like letting crime get out of hand.
What you need to do is to decide that the apartment complex where a lot of them live is "blighted", tear it down, and build a new gold-plated "community center." Or even better, take a thriving neighborhood, condemn it to benefit a drug company, and let it become a collection of vacant lots. (New London, CT)
For what it's worth, Bubba, New London is not New Brighton. We have a community center that is, in the main, pretty utilitarian. And the senior housing in our area is, in the main, not blighted. We had a fair amount of vacant land available for a number of projects and most of those have gone forward in the last four years. It will be interesting to see whether the new crew at City Hall can continue the momentum.
Understood, but if you're talking about the city council and the mayor promising free candy, the attitude is the same, and the differences are largely going to be a matter of degree and chance. It's also worth noting that the Kelo house wasn't in a blighted neighborhood, and if you look at a map of New London, open land is less than a mile away.
So it's not that different, really.
It's also worth noting that the Kelo house wasn't in a blighted neighborhood, and if you look at a map of New London, open land is less than a mile away.
So it's not that different, really.
I can see all manner of potential abuse coming, but a Kelo-style taking isn't going to happen in New Brighton, primarily because of the way traffic flows through town. I'm going to revisit my series on New Brighton soon and the dynamics of how people move about is part of the story.
Kelo-style taking, no; we're primed for that. But lots of opportunities for government plans without particular attention to details, return on investment, and the like? You bet.
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