In selling parkland to pay bills, mighty Duluth joins little Lilydale

Recent headlines out of Duluth haven’t been pretty — except when they’ve been over pictures of the Tiffany window that the city may auction off to get out of a $6.5 million budget hole. City officials’ efforts to sell off another public asset — parkland along picturesque Park Point — puts Duluth in the same league as one of the Twin Cities metro area’s tiniest towns: little Lilydale, Minn.

Selling Mississippi River bluff parkland tempts local towns big and small

As state funding to local government shrinks, raising cash by selling off Mississipi River bluff parkland for development has proved tempting for both the metro’s biggest city and one of its smallest urban entities.

Despite sizable resident…