Angst

There seems to be some angst about the Star Tribune article last weekend..... it was mostly accurate as newspaper articles go and as they often go the writer had a story he wanted to tell..... So as a person who describes only one side of a coin he did the same... he only conveyed the negative and did not write about any of the positives we shared. That is the way it goes.... now I suppose we could have said no to the request for information but of course that would have been just as wrong.

The question on population from roughly 6,000 to roughly 5,200 is from estimates to the recent census data.... of course in a City like ours where about 10% of our housing stock is or has going through some phase of foreclosure and a corresponding proportion of the population is in transition it is doubtful all our residents were counted properly...

Now for those who think we should only talk the positive and not be honest about the troubles we face then we will not succeed. Well over a dozen people were interviewed for the story and many of those were quoted ... none of them wanted to do any harm to the City but simply were being honest about the issues they faced.

I find the criticism of myself most interesting as it must be clearly politically motivated as I was against all this rapid residential growth to begin with and those that perpetrated this destructive behavior are not helping to fix the problem. The problems we face are the ones I and others warned about but we were not listened to at the time but we are here working to correct mistakes of the past.