Budget deal reached at Capitol By Dennis Lien dlien@pioneerpress.com Article Last Updated: 05/18/2008 03:45:57 PM CDT Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislative leaders reached agreement today on a deal to erase a projected $935 million budget deficit.
The deal and a bonding package that provides funding for the Central Corridor light-rail project, a proposed state park along Lake Vermilion, and new facilities at the Minneapolis Veterans Home were announced at a 2:15 p.m. press conference at the State Capitol.
"Minnesotans deserve tax relief and a state government that lives within its means," Pawlenty said in a statement. "This agreement delivers both.''
With the deal, legislators were prepared to approve the bills in floor sessions and end the session on time later today.
The deal, the product of weeks of closed-door discussions, also includes a property tax cap sought by Pawlenty and tax benefits for veterans and military members.
It looks like Pawlenty finally saw the light that was shining off all those millions of Federal dollars of investment the Twin Cities will definitely receive as the Central Corridor is built by 2014.
I'm a little disappointed I can't write a blog post scathing the Governor to the eternal damnation of transit hell, condemned to have his veto-pen clutching hands run over very lightly by light-rail trains every eight minutes for a thousand years while being spit upon by a pack of homeless people in wheelchairs.
With less than a week remaining in this year's legislative session, time is running out for the Central Corridor light rail line. At stake is nearly half a billion dollars in federal funding for the project. Governor Pawlenty put that money in peril after flip-flopping and vetoing the required $70 million in borrowing.
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Clearly, its crunch time for the Central Corridor. Everyone get out and push!
Also:
To contact Governor Tim Pawlenty and Lt. Governor Carol Molnau, please write, phone, fax or e-mail.
Mailing Address:
Office of the Governor 130 State Capitol 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. St. Paul, MN 55155
Here are the latest meeting notes from the U of MN on the Central Corridor:
Faculty Consultative Committee Thursday, May 1, 2008
12:00 – 2:15 7 Mondale Hall
Present:
Gary Balas (chair), Nancy Carpenter, Carol Chomsky, Shawn Curley, Dan Dahlberg, William Durfee, Marti Hope Gonzales, Michael Hancher, Carolyn Hayes, Lois Heller, Emily Hoover, Jeff Kahn, Mary Jo Kane, Judith Martin, Martin Sampson, Jennifer Windsor
Absent:
Barbara Elliott, Nelson Rhodus, Geoffrey Sirc, Becky Yust
Guests:
Associate Vice President Donna Peterson, Todd Iverson (University Relations); President Robert Bruininks
1. LRT Update
Professor Balas convened the meeting at 12:05 and welcomed Associate
Vice President Peterson and Mr. Iverson to provide an update on the Central Corridor light-rail projects. The Committee discussed with them at length the politics of the process as well as the projected mitigation costs if the trains run at grade on Washington Avenue and other vehicular traffic is diverted to other routes.
Subsequent to the meeting, Professor Balas wrote a letter to Metropolitan Council Chair Peter Bell transmitting the following resolution from the Committee.
Because light rail transportation is important to the future of the University of Minnesota, the Faculty Consultative Committee, which is the elected executive committee of the University's Faculty Senate, strongly supports the Central Corridor Light Rail project. Knowing that about 30% of the riders on the Central Corridor line will be University students, faculty, staff, and visitors, we welcome this efficient and environmentally progressive way of traveling to and from the campus.
We also strongly endorse the Regents’ preference for the northern alignment. The Committee joins the Regents in that preference because several major disadvantages would impair an alternative route along Washington Avenue:
-- The physical safety of our students and staff could be jeopardized by a Washington Avenue route for light rail. Currently many thousands of students and staff cross Washington Avenue each day, at six major intersections on and near campus. The frequent passing of on-grade trains at those busy intersections, even at the slow speeds that would be required given the population density in the campus area, would present an unacceptable risk.
-- The significant permanent disruption of traffic on Washington Avenue that would result from running surface trains on that road would damage the University community. The diversion of approximately 25,000 cars and 1,500 buses to surrounding streets and neighborhoods would be unacceptable. Most threatening is the negative impact on both emergency-vehicle and patient access to the hospital and University clinics (some 500,000 visits per year). The northern alignment would avoid those harmful consequences.
-- A Washington Avenue at-grade route for light rail would impose upon the University extraordinary costs for inevitable traffic-mitigation projects. The University has no budgeted resources for such highway projects and can not be expected to divert tuition resources from education to highway infrastructure.
For these and other reasons we strongly endorse the recommendation of the Board of Regents that the Central Corridor line be routed along the northern alignment.
As I stated earlier, the notion that 1) the train will endanger pedestrians is ludicrous. Currently thousands of cars are traveling 40 mph down the Washington Avenue corridor as they flow into campus. Not only would the LRT be far, far safer, it would probably make the streets in the neighborhood more pedestrian friendly, and less likely to be the kind of place where people get assaulted.
And 2), the possible bus/transit option along Washington Avenue is on the table, and would allow emergency vehicles far easier access to the hospital then they currently enjoy. Meanwhile, customers going to and from the hospital have good access to it from the I-94 on-ramp along Fulton and Delaware Streets, as do all the Washington Avenue businesses.
Finally, during their recent email to the MetCouncil, the U's lawyers could only point to one loading dock that would have to be moved with this new alignment. Judging by the evidence so far provided, the "mitigation costs" will probably not be that substantial, given the magnitude of the project and the $200M price tag of a LRT tunnel.
The real story: The U of MN is apparently standing in the way, alongside our Governor, of a long-term sustainable transit investment that would benefit the local economy while improving the streetlife and walkability of the campus.
Sometimes I think about the Internets, and how they're awesome. And I'm not the only one! This seems to be a common theme on internet blogs and websites! Many people enjoy discussing the awesomeness of the Internets, especially while they are writing on it.
But I'm convinced that these serieses of tubes are not a completely new phenomenon. Internets-y things have existed before... things that link people and juxtapose unlike and like things in streams and networks of evolving webs and shapes... all horizontal and distributed &c.
So, here's a list of things that are like the Internets:
Walter Benjamin is a famous philosopher who enjoyed writing about technology, history, and Marxism. He lived in Germany and France during the 20s and 30s, and died while fleeing from the Nazis.
His final project is a large work of small bits called the Arcades Project, which is a strange and alphabetically catalogued book of small excerpts of facts and quotes about the experience of consumerism in early 19th c. Parisian shopping malls and department stores. He quotes frequently from Baudelaire, and talks about "the flaneur", who represents the way in which colonial consumption and urban experience intersected during the Industrial era.
It's like the Internets because: There's no way to read this book from beginning to end. Each little segment is "linked" with a reference, and there's no intervening narrator or narrative voice to guide you through the text. Instead, you are forced to jump around, turning pages as each little "link" sends you to some other part of the book.
A public library.
Most every city has a building in it containing books owned by the government, and any resident can go inside and "borrow" these books, take them home, look around, learn things, and hang out.
These buildings are gradually falling into disrepair, as their civic budgets are continually cut. Some of them are struggling to cope with the internets, which (as you know) allow anyone to access limitless information from their homes. Some of them are capitalizing on these Internets, by providing open access to them from inside their walls.
It's like the Internets because: When you're browsing for a book on a library shelf, you're guided into a "section" containing books of very similar subject matter. For example, if you're looking for a book on urban planning, you will find, not one, but fifty books on urban planning in a library. So, too, the Internets allow you to find "similar" items... as one sidewalk blog leads to another.
Message boards in cities.
Back in the day, there used to be parts of town that were known for having messages on the walls of the buildings on the street. For example, Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg Brooklyn was well known for having a message board, and people would post message for others in the neighborhood to see and look at. If you needed a job, or were looking for a good time, you would put a message up and people would walk along the sidewalk and read the messages. This happened on the street, and nobody organized it.
It's like the Internets because: It's exactly like the Internets! The only difference is that you had to physically be there in order to read the messages. The Internets allow you to be anywhere, and communicate with anyone ... (though the vast majority of readership of this Twin City Sidewalks blog still lives in the Twin Cities, for some reason.)
The OKeh Laughing Record, by the way, was a German recording imported to the US around 1920, and was one of the top-selling records of the decade. Bootleg copies were sold under many different labels over the years, and it was still turning up in one version or another well into the fifties.
It's a song, which you can listen to here, (or here) of a man playing a tune on the solo trumpet while a lady laughs her ass off (over and over, peals of laughter, ROTFL, &c.) while the man plays on and on this song on the trumpet ... and eventually as this goes on, the man starts laughing too and soon they're both laughing for a while, before he continues his trumpet song while the lady keeps laughing.
That's the record!
It's like the Internets because: It is all about mediated experience. Far more important than the tune being played, is the experience of listening to someone else listening to the tune. You start laughing because you hear this lady laughing, and soon you're laughing and the trumpet player is laughing, and you're all laughing and space and time have been transcended. It's about experiencing a "phenomenon", rather than music per se, and like the comment threads of blogs the laughing lady is helping you experience the phonograph (a revolutionary product of its era!). Much like "two girls one cup", the fun is in experiencing someone's experience, rather than the experience itself (if that makes any sense).
Times Square.
The corner of Broadway, 7th Avenue, and 42nd Street is a large square in New York City that has long been known for its neon signage. You go there and are immediately overwhelmed by image, a spectacle of light and message, a semantic flood of information. At New Years a ball drops and millions of people hang out "to say they were there." It glows like the sun at all hours of the day and night, and movies have been watched there for almost a century.
It's like the Internets because: when you go, you are forced to "filter" the information around you. You simply cannot take it all in. Instead, you grab onto a small detail in the square and experience only it, filtering out all the other "noise" surrounding you in so much seizure-inducing light. Just like the way in which you "filter" the Internets with your RSS feed or your search engine, Times Square presents a sensory overload within which you must make your way, ever incomplete.
is sometimes used as a coloring agent. It has found application in canned beverages, baked products, dairy products, ice cream, yogurt, yellow cakes orange juice, biscuits, popcorn-color, sweets, cake icings, cereals, sauces, gelatins, etc. It is a significant ingredient in most commercial curry powders.
It's like the Internets because: It's a rhizome. Rhizomes grows in networks, sending off shoots underground in various directions, and lacking a distinct or clear center. Rhizomes can be very very large, and its impossible to tell sometimes where they "begin" or "end," as they continually flow in to any given direction, making it difficult to distinguish whether or not you're discussing "one" or "many" separate organisms. The Internets is exactly the same... where does one site begin and another end? Where is the "Center" of the internets? The Google HQ? (Plus, tumeric apparently helps you remember things for a long time... and the internets never forgets either.)
The Penny Magazine of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.
The Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, founded in 1826, was a Whiggish London organization that published inexpensive texts intended to adapt scientific and similarly high-minded material for the rapidly expanding reading public. It was established mainly at the instigation of Lord Brougham with the objects of publishing information to people who were unable to obtain formal teaching, or who preferred self-education. The Society was sometimes mentioned in contemporary sources as SDUK.
It's like the Internets because: The Penny Magazine was intended for the "everyday person", and because of the recent fall in the price of paper, the 1830s saw a flowering of small print journals that contained "information" for people moving to and concentrating in the rapidly-growing cities. The Penny Magazine was an almost encyclopedic tome of information, juxtaposing things like architecture next to diatribes about the working classes next to long descriptions of foodstuffs (e.g. butter, sugar, tumeric) next to woodcuts of savage beasts in the jungle.
In sum: I hope you enjoyed this list of things that are like the Internets.
What do you think? What else is like the Internets?
dirty old industrial buildings of minnesota pictures
drop dead clothing imports
drunk on light rail mn
franklin and nicollet
gazebo at argyle lake, babylon, ny
gopher bar
grand theft auto iv minneapolis
grand theft auto iv minneapolis
guthrie parking
history of savannah ga
history of savannah ga
hookers in savannah, ga
jerry trooien
molly quinns restaurant
nicollet street sign
ohio sidewalk policy
phalen corridor
pho twin cities
pothole proposals
pothole repair bloomington minnesota
potholes in mn 2008
pro con list electoral college
proctor & gamble cast iron figurines
prositutes in savannah ga
sidewalk pot hole
space within these lines not dedicated on city sidewalks
st paul skyway hours
the worst thing about savannah georgia
traffic circles in mn
twin cities light rail
twin city landmarks
twin city ohio
victorian sidewalk
walkability
what are green city sidewalks made of?
Bill Lindeke
Saint Paul, Minnesota
Jane Jacobs devotee, quasi-journalist, ideologically determined beer and coffee drinker, bicyclist, and MA Candidate at the University of Minnesota's Geography Department.
