Minneapolis neighborhood boards: the ‘power crazed few’ or ‘only thing that has worked’?

The Minneapolis City Council is due this morning to discuss public comments on the “Framework for the Future,” a draft plan on how the city should proceed with community engagement after funding for the Neighborhood Revitalization Program expires next year.

The comments are posted on a city website here. At first glance, they appear to mostly be in favor of finding a way to pay for the existing neighborhood program into the future. Read excerpts after the jump.

“I read the draft entitled, “Framework for the Future” and what a load of malarkey. Am I to understand that the city wants an average citizen to read, understand, and apply of this piece of literature and call it “Community Engagement”?”

“I think that NRP should be let go with the original end time frame in 2009. The little bit of money that would be available to the different neighborhood groups would be better spent on Fire & Police… I only have so much money and so does the city…let the neighborhood groups go back to the volunteers instead of the power crazed few that the NRP money has created.”

“The one thing the City must not do is kill NRP. Stop trying to destroy one thing that has worked in this poorly-managed, a**-backwards city!”

“I do think that some control by elected officials is in order. The heavy-handed tactics of some certain neighborhood activists in the Nokomis area while dealing with businesses on 34th Avenue a few years ago was unforgiveable… Projects utilizing public funds need to be scrutinized carefully, not pushed through by gung-ho special interest activists. If these few people are making neighborhood decisions, they should be elected by the voting public in the general city elections. We don’t need another unelected met council.”

“The NRP has taken less than 1% of the city budget and applied it directly to where it is needed, in the neighborhoods amongst the residents. While we have never received NRP funds, my wife and I have witnessed the neighborhoods throughout the city have indeed been revitalized. We think the NRP is a good use of our tax dollars unlike the massive baseball stadium robbery.”