Minneapolis park commissioner Walt Dziedzic’s rumored decision not to run for re-election this year gets confirmation in the Star Tribune today. With his announcement, Dziedzic — a deceptively nimble pol who can convincingly channel Rambo and playact as Dumbo in the span of a meeting or even an agenda item — signals the end to a nearly half-century career arc of public service to Minneapolis, from beat cop to city council member (alderman in those days) to the city’s semi-autonomous park and recreation board. He’s the only sitting city official to have a street named after him.

News of Dziedzic’s departure comes amid an atmosphere of financial desperation at the park board, due in part to decreasingly reliable funding via the state and the city. One question is how his successor will vote when controversial and politically charged plans for a hydroelectric plant at St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River come back before the board. (The only announced candidate to represent Dziedzic’s northeast Minneapolis district, Liz Wielinski, is opposed.) The privately backed Crown Hydro proposal, like Dziedzic, has been bouncing aroundcity government for decades. But Dziedzic has been a bulwark against the project, showing a friendlier face to Xcel Energy, the public utility that in one incarnation or another has operated a hydro plant at the falls since the 19th century. His was a deciding vote in a 5-4 action the last time Crown Hydro came before the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board. But the commissioners also left an opening for the project to resurface and signs are it will: Observers say Crown Hydro’s backers continue to attend MPRB meetings even when the project doesn’t appear on the agenda. When it does appear on the MPRB’s agenda, the political players it brings to the stage are top drawer. Crown Hydro CEO/owner Bill Hawks made news for hosting Vice President Dick Cheneyas guest of honor at a 2006 fund raiser for U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann during her successful maiden campaign for Congress at Hawks’ palatial west-suburbs “Hawks’ Nest” residence. And Walter Mondale, whom Cheney is only days away from joining among the ranks of formerU.S. vice presidents, made his opposition to Crown Hydro known by letter at the MPRB’s December 2007 meeting. That inspired Jon Olson — then the MPRB’s president, a Crown Hydro supporter and a one-time contender to succeed former U.S. Rep. Martin Sabo — to call out Mondale, who lives nearby the project site, as a “NIMBY.”