The Minneapolis park board is planning to use $1.7 million in Metropolitan Council funds to buy a piece of Mississippi riverfront property from the family business of a Met Council member.

Met Council member Roger Scherer maintains a financial stake in Scherer Bros. Lumber Company company, though he retired as president and CEO 15 years ago. (His son, Peter, is now president.)

Scherer tells the Minnesota Independent that if the question of funding the purchase comes before the Met Council, he won’t vote on the matter, discuss it with fellow council members, or attend a meeting of the council’s Community Development Committee when it’s considered there.

That’s in keeping with state law governing conflicts of interest, according to Met Council spokesperson Bonnie Kollodge, who couldn’t recall an instance of council funds being used to buy property in which a member had a financial interest.

The 16 Met Council members are appointed by the governor. Roger Scherer is the longest-serving member, with 17 years’ service under three governors, all Republican.

Among other things, the Met Council has authority over transit, water and sewers, and regional parks in the Twin Cities metro area. Some Minneapolis parks have regional status and get money from the Met Council. The newest is known as Above the Falls, running along the Mississippi River from Plymouth Avenue just north of downtown to the city’s northern border. The park board, the Minneapolis City Council, and the Met Council approved a plan for Above the Falls that envisions a strip of riverfront parkland and a path at the Scherer Bros. location, just above Plymouth Ave. on the river’s east bank.

Scherer Bros. Lumber Company, which ceased operations at its Northeast Minneapolis yard on Dec. 31 (pdf), has been trying to sell the 13.84-acre property since at least last summer. A prospective buyer for part of the property lost interest in the fall. That’s when park board staff — who had been called in on the earlier deal due to the park board’s interest in land along the river and for a path — say they began to pursue purchase of the entire property (pdf).

The park board had negotiated an easement for a strip of land along the river with the industrial property owner immediately upstream but was unable to do so with Scherer Bros., according to minutes from the Above the Falls Citizen Advisory Committee (pdf).

At its final 2009 meeting — and the last meeting for four of nine commissioners who didn’t win or seek re-election – the park board voted to pursue the deal. The proposal hadn’t come via the usual committee process and there was no price tag attached. However, at the Dec. 16 meeting (video, starts at 1:41), Commissioner Jon Olson cited an appraisal’s “reasonable price” of $650,000 per acre, which would put the total cost for the entire site at nearly $9 million.

One park commissioner, Annie Young, abstained from the vote, citing pollution concerns. Park board planner Judd Reitkerk assured her that environmental studies had found no vermiculite, a material that in local stockpiles was tainted with asbestos, prompting massive cleanups in Northeast Minneapolis — including at the park board’s own Gluek Park only a mile upstream.

But the studies of the Scherer Bros. site show that asbestos was indeed found on the property (pdf).

A purchase agreement, including payment of $400,000 in earnest money to Scherer Bros., was supposed to be completed by the end of December. But that’s been stalled by confusion over who, if anyone, owns part of the property’s river frontage. (A triangular piece of land, possibly a result of infilling or sedimentation, comprises almost half the property’s length along the river, but isn’t included with the Scherer Bros. title.)

The company offered to finance the deal over four years at 3.25 percent interest, according to park board staff, who said other possible sources of money included the state’s new Legacy fund. The $400,000 payment, refundable if the sale falls through, would come from proceeds from the sale of parkland downstream to the Minnesota Department of Transportation for the new I-35W bridge.

Plans are for the park board to take a final vote on the deal within 90 days of the signing of the purchase agreement. The Met Council spokesperson says they haven’t yet received an application for funds for the project.

Why buy nearly a nearly-14-acre lumber industrial site — complete with buildings and parking lots, “mostly concrete, ” as described by Cristof Traudes in the Downtown Journal — if the park plan calls only for a strip of riverfront and a recreational path?

“Their interest is in selling the entire property,” Reitkerk told the park board at the Dec. 16 meeting, and the Scherer Bros. Lumber Company wanted the deal done by Dec. 31. He termed it “a friendly purchase.”

Tom Nordyke, Jon Gurban

Every couple of years, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board makes headlines for violating citizens’ right to free speech. The latest example? The board’s president, Tom Nordyke, and superintendent, Jon Gurban, are banning the Minneapolis Charter Commission from holding public meetings at park buildings because the commission’s topic is a proposed charter amendment that would eliminate the Park Board.

Last week, according to the Star Tribune’s Steve Brandt, Nordyke told Charter Commission Chairman Jim Bernstein that the Park Board’s objection was to the content of the speech that would take place at the commission’s public meetings:

I cannot support holding the meetings in our buildings and wasting more taxpayer dollars and staff time on this initiative.

Bernstein ran unsuccessfully for park board in 2005. That same year, the suprintendent sicced police on another park board candidate who was attempting to distribute flyers for his reform campaign at a city park. Gurban told park board candidate Jason Stone to stop handing out campaign literature on park property and eventually called park police. The American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota (ACLU-MN) intervened on Stone’s behalf.

Reporter Scott Russell quoted Gurban in the Southwest Journal:

Jason would say: “How are you this evening?” My response would be, “Jason, you can’t do this. And you know better. You were at that meeting last Wednesday night. Stop doing this.” … Am I happy three squad cars showed up? No, I am not. I know those squad cars have better things to do than to deal with an issue like this. If I was Jason Stone, I would be a little bit embarrassed about that. All Jason had to do was to stop handing out his literature.

Stone lost his 2005 race and is running for a place on the park board again this year.

Two years ago, Nordyke’s predecessor as board president, Jon Olson, wouldn’t let a citizen criticize Gurban during “open time” at board meetings. As the Star Tribune’s Pam Louwagie reported, the ACLU-MN again intervened after Olson cut off Minneapolis resident Arlene Fried, a co-founder of the citizen watchdog group Minneapolis Parkwatch, in the midst of a statement critical of Gurban:

FRIED: … Four: Failing to comply with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act by not honoring all requests for public information. Five: Withholding of information from commissioners and the public, for example –
OLSON: Um, Ma’am … 
FRIED: These are governmental issues. 
OLSON: Okay, do you have documentation that we have failed to comply with the open Data Practices Act?
FRIED: I’m aware of it.
OLSON: You know, this is not — I’m going to cut you off right there. I’m going to cut you off.
FRIED: Excuse me. Excuse me. You can do that –
OLSON: Thank you very much and you have a good night. Thank you. And we’ll move on to our next speaker –
FRIED: Freedom of speech. You’re denying me freedom of speech.
OLSON: I don’t think so. I’m not going to allow you to get up there and make accusations like that, that we violated the law.

May 2, 2007:

After the ACLU-MN intervened, Fried tried again at the May 16, 2007 meeting. In this second clip, Nordyke (who was not the board’s president at the time) persuades Olson to let Fried finish her statement.

Disclosure: I know Fried and have worked with her on several park-related issues, including posting these two clips from the official park board meeting videos to YouTube. I also wrote a January 2008 commentary for the Daily Mole expressing hope that newly elected President Nordyke would raise the park board’s standard of transparency, accountability and professionalism.

This is a story of that other, quieter white meat – more thinly sliced than the fat slabs the mall gets, to be sure, but just as tasty. It starts with the new I-35W bridge across the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, which will be wider than the one that fell down last year. Federal rules say the state must own all the land under the new bridge, so the Minnesota Department of Transportation has been buying up parcels of land, 13 in all, that will lie in the new bridge’s bigger shadow. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board owned one of those parcels, about two acres in size, on the west bank of the river and to the downstream side of the bridge. The State of Minnesota first paid for the park board to acquire that land in the 1980s as part of the state’s funding for the extension of West River Parkway that carries the country’s Great River Road through the heart of Minneapolis and under I-35W.

But now, to comply with federal rules that apply to the new bridge, the state needs the land back from the park board. According to Minnesota law, whenever land purchased using state-issued bonds changes hands and changes use, the cash proceeds from the land transfer go back to the state. In this case, a state agency (MnDOT) was the buyer (through condemnation because of land title complications), so the $744,000 MnDOT paid this year for the parcel and for a road easement on an adjacent parcel must be returned to the state’s general fund.

That’s what state law says — unless the state Legislature grants a special exception. And the House of Representative passed just such an exception unanimously on Monday, after the Senate approved it two weeks ago by a vote of 52-10.

Got that? The state first bought the land for the park board and now will re-gift the value of the land to the park board and will restore the park board’s use of the land for a parkway. The bill now awaits Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s signature; despite his fondness for vetoing funds with urban destinations, the unanimous vote in the House (along with assurances that the money will go to buy other riverfront land) will likely keep his veto pen in check. Come December, freeway traffic will travel across an I-35W bridge, as before; bikes, cars and pedestrians will travel beneath the new bridge along West River Parkway, as before; but the state will have spent $744,000 on land it already paid for, once before.

For views of some of those involved, read below the jump.

Continued: Click “Read more”Here is what some of those involved have to say:

State Sen. David Hann (in an e-mail): “There was no compelling argument made to allow the exception other than the Park Board wanted to keep the money to use in case they wanted to purchase another portion of land in the future.  A number of us (10 to be exact) came to the conclusion that the current practice ought to be followed and if the Minneapolis Park Board feels the need to acquire additional land in the future, and wants the state to pay for it, they are welcome to make their case through the normal bonding process.”

State Sen. Scott Dibble (in an interview, responding to the argument that the Minneapolis park board should compete with other proposals if it wants $744,000 in state funding): “That’s a valid point of view. My counter argument is that this already competed and prevailed [when the Legislature originally funded Minneapolis park board purchase of the land]. Now through no fault of their own, the land is being taken away.”

State Sen. Claire Robling (in an e-mail): “It has always been state law that funds received from the sale of land purchased using state bonding money must be returned to the state. I do not like making exceptions. In addition, this land will still be held by a public entity with public access available through the trail. The city’s existing use is not completely lost, so I did not believe the city should be given all the money to purchase another parcel along the river.”

Brian Rice, attorney for the Minneapolis park board (in testimony to the state Senate State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee): “It’s a two-acre piece of land. You’re not going to be putting any recreational things underneath that bridge. … Sen. Dibble’s bill says we’ve got to use [the funds] to replace the land that’s lost. … MnDOT will own and maintain the land itself, which is 95 percent of the land, and that will be their property. They will maintain it. More likely than not, they’ll want to restrict the use to it. They may fence it off to protect it because those are a critical piece of the state’s infrastructure. So it will go from being park board land to MnDOT’s land. … I don’t think just say, okay, anything goes underneath their properties.”

Mike Stensberg, assistant director of land management, MNDOT (in an interview, responding to the suggestion that MNDOT might fence off previously open areas): “It isn’t going to happen that way. The problem is the right-of-way is a certain width because of additional lanes on either side of the bridge. The park was under the bridge before. It isn’t going to be any different. It’s just that it’s wider.”

State Sen. Sandy Pappas (speaking at the Senate State and Local Government Operations and Oversight Committee): “I have a similar issue with a library in Ramsey County. … I think it was a handicapped-accessible water fountain or something was paid for with state bond funds. And then 20 years later you decide you need to build a new library — really the same purpose why you did it originally, but you end up having to [give] back to the state a sum of money. … It seems kind of silly to have to pay back, in this case it’s like $13,000 or something, instead of just turning that around and using it for the same purpose. So I think this is similar situation to my legislation, and I think this is good public policy.”

State Sen. Chris Gerlach (in an interview): “This is horrendously bad public policy. It sets a precedent for local governments to get back money [from sale of state-bonded land] instead of returning it to be reallocated. … This is the wrong answer.”

Peter Sausen, former assistant commissioner of finance, who retired in 2007 after 25 years in the department (in an interview, responding to Sen. Gerlach’s suggestion that this bill sets a poor precedent): “I would agree with him. … But the Finance Department never tried to get money from local government. The state should get back the [funds when bonded land is sold] in general. … We would tell local governments, if you want to keep the money, go ahead and try [to get a law passed to allow it].”

“I don’t know anything about that,” park board president Tom Nordyke tells the Minnesota Monitor. “I don’t think we get to just decide when we delete e-mails.” Nordyke says he assumes staff is familiar with legal requirements for preserving data, and adds that the board had hired a staff person to handle data requests.

“Don [Siggelkow] considers his e-mails transitory and deletes them,” wrote MPRB Administrative Services Coordinator Beth Broich in an April 14 e-mail to Arlene Fried, a co-founder of Minneapolis Parkwatch, whose complaints about lack of compliance with the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act during the park board’s “open time” last year got shut down by then-President Jon Olson until the ACLU-MN intervened. In messages sent April 18 to another resident, Edna Brazaitis, Broich said the superintendent also deletes his e-mail: “Pursuant to our Records Retention Schedule, approved by the State of Minnesota, our employees are not required to keep e-mail communications. It is up to each staff person whether they keep e-mails, and Mr. Siggelkow and Mr. Gurban do not.” The park board’s records retention policy permits destruction of “transitory messages, e-mail or phone messages of short-term interest which are considered incidental and non-vital correspondence.”

Policy or not, the park board’s practices may run afoul of state laws. The park board administration has been sparring with members of Parkwatch and other residents for more than a year over the park board’s compliance with state data practices laws — including the “duty of each agency, and of its chief administrative officer, to carefully protect and preserve government records from deterioration, mutilation, loss, or destruction.”

Disclaimer: The reporter is a member of and has served as spokesperson for Friends of the Riverfront, a citizens group that has taken the MPRB to court and of which Edna Brazaitis, one of the citizens mentioned above, is president.