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INFORMATION #3 09-22-1997~ty of MEMORANDUM TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: Mayor & City Council Pat Klaers, City Admin~~ September 22, 1997 Information Attached for your review is an article from the fall Minnesota City Management Association Newsletter. The author of this short article is Jon Hohenstein who has been the assistant to the Administrator in Eagan for the past ten years or so. As the Council knows, Eagan is a fast growing community and much larger than Elk River, but we have common experiences in dealing with growth and new residents moving into our communities. You actually have to get through the first half of the article to get to the relevant comments about citizens and their interactions with Municipal Government. In this article, Jon is venting some frustrations that we all experience. I wish to advise the Council that the City did not receive any appeals on the assessments for the Macon and Riverview Drive Improvements project. The assessment hearing was August 4, 1997, and according to state law, the individuals submitting written appeals prior to the assessment hearing must "within 30 days of the adoption of the assessment.., appeal to District Court by serving a notice upon the Mayor or Clerk of the Municipality." As no notices have been received, I believe that we can safely assume that no assessment appeals are proceeding forward. s :XcouncilXinformtn. do c 13065 Orono Parkway · P.O. Box 490 · Elk River, MN 55330 · TDD & Phone: (612) 441-7420 · Fax: (612) 441-7425 FALL 1997 5 MEMORANDA FROM THE EDGE Jon Hohenstein If ignorance is bliss, I must know some of the happiest people on earth. Sometimes after a long day, that's just the way I feel. The burr under my saddle lately is the number of self-appointed victims walking around. The Grand Army of the Put Upon seems to grow with each passing day and I for one have had enough. Some years ago, there was considerable discussion of de- criminalizing "victimless" crimes. The idea was that some actions really only have consequences for the people doing them, so why punish that person to boot. Well, it didn't take long to find the flaws in that theory. Drug abuse affects people besides the user. Prostitution has con- sequences for the welfare of families and public health. Construction in the setback tends to change drainage pat- terns and so on. It is safe to say that there are victims in all of these situa- tions, but I think that a lot of people got stuck in this groove and just kept going. They didn't stop with crimes. They concluded that most ordinary things--work, traffic, copy ma- chines--also victimize people. Ersatz victims use many varia- tions, but their theme is consis- tent. It goes, "They (meaning non-specific, menacing conspi- rators) did this (meaning per- sonal affronts of profound emotional consequence) to us (meaning me)." Certainly an action doesn't need to be a crime to be harmful, but in- creasingly, we hear this motto being applied to things that really only affect the complai- nant's ego, pride or self inter- est. In many cases, the trans- lation actually amounts to; "They (meaning one's super- visor, co-worker, family) did this (required personal ac- countability, responsibility or grown up behavior) to us (still meaning me)." Robert Bly has a book out called Sibling Society that makes the point that many peo- ple in today's society behave as arrested adolescents. They blame others for anything they find distasteful, demand that others be responsible for their happiness and are indignant to- ward any action or belief which fails to place them at the center of the universe. Not only is this damaging now, Bly notes, but it increasingly leaves young people without a model of adult behavior. We see the effects of this when public debate and personal in- teraction increasingly resemble a schoolyard fracas, with few rules and less reason. Remem- ber too that Bly's last major book recommended nude drum beating in the woods. Imagine how bad things must be if he is finding fault. Now this is not to say that one should never be like a child. For instance, there is no higher call than a childlike faith. As we grow older, it is also im- portant to remember to play, to enjoy and to imagine--all child fortes. People value youthful exuberance, boyish looks, girl- ish charms and second child- hoods. What is it about kids that people don't appreciate? Selfishness, whining and ex- cessive dependency, that's what. Nothing illustrates the sibling society more obviously than peoples' relationship to gov- ernment. When I was growing up in the mid-baby boom, post-depression, post-war, pre-Watergate era, the charge was to ask not what our coun- try could do for us, but what we could do for our country. The threat of government was its potential to become a Big Brother. The clear implication being a call to self-reliance and personal responsibility to dem- ocratically shape our society rather than be shaped by the will of the few. As is the case with true adoles- cents, the pervasive attitude to- ward government today seems to be that of a teenager toward a parent. It is a love-hate rela- tionship alternating between in- sistence on self-sufficiency and fits of abject dependence. Far from Big Brother, government today finds itself Mom and Dad to a house full of emotion- ally challenged pre-adults. The same person will demand an elimination of government reg- ulation and interference with their activities and then insist that restrictions be placed on Hohenstenstein Continued on page 4 4 MCMA NEWSLE'I-I'ER Hohenstein frown page 5 the development next door to prevent whatever threats real or imagined it would present to their world. The same person will denounce bureaucracy when called upon to justify a request regarding their own ac- tivities and will insist that com- plex rules and procedures be developed to control every as- pect of other people's behav- ior. The same person will fight the City tooth and nail when cited on a weed com- plaint and then demand that the City place strict controls on others whose homes aren't kept well enough for the neigh- borhood. At other times, people who pay about a dollar a day for police and fire protection, infrastruc- ture maintenance, public facili- ties, parks, community en- hancements and the other ben- efits of a multi-million dollar municipal corporation, will de- mand that staff drop every- thing to resolve their problem right now. If that is not po.ssi- ble, then staff is.unresponsive, uncooperative and inefficient. Public agencies cost too much and public employees don't work hard enough, "but they had better have the time to give their full attention to making my neighbor move his com- post pile so I don't have to be a grown up and talk to the per- son myself." Often times, the individual's right to be heard is confused with the individual's expecta- tion to have his opinion pre- vail. If decision-makers weigh the evidence and come to a conclusion different from our own, the social contract suggests that we respect the will of the majority and the val- ue of diverse opinions. Rather than subscribe to this basic the- ory of representative democra- cy, I have seen people hold their breath until they mm blue, spread sleazy gossip on the playground and say bad words about the people who made the decision. It's time for the volunteer vic- tims to take responsibility for themselves. They need to grow up or suffer the conse- quences. The logical extension of a sibling society is an ado- lescent government and any- body who doesn't' shape up is going to get one big, collective noogy. You've been warned.