It’s been too long since I’ve been a bona fide civilian. At least in the since that I can’t step far enough away from local government to see it as an average citizens would. Do citizens think that city, county, school district, state, and federal officials all work closely together to coordinate taxes and services so that one doesn’t step on or trip over the efforts of the others? I hope they don’t think that happens, because it doesn’t.
Maybe state and federal officials work closely together. I sometimes think I can see evidence of that. Other times not. It is not unusual for cities and counties to work together on projects, especially road projects. It’s not unusual at all for cities to work closely with school districts on both projects and services.
In Eden Prairie, I am really pleased with the way the School District works with the City.
The new Superintendent and I have started a practice of having our respective management staffs meet in a joint staff meeting once each quarter. The School Board and the City Council meet in joint session twice each year. It keeps relationships in tact and faces familiar. If that’s all it did, it would be worth it, but we discuss policy issues and plans for the future too. It’s a good relationship for us to have, especially from a citizen/taxpayer perspective.
The city-state government relationship is an odd one in Minnesota. Most cities feel like they are autonomous corporate entities. The state, for the most part, would emphasize that cities are mere sub-units of state government. Most cities, if they took a good, hard look at their finances would not be able to support their current array of city services without the financial assistance the state provides to the cities through a program known as Local Government Aid (LGA). Eden Prairie is different in that respect, as are many of our adjoining suburban neighbors. We don’t receive much LGA and if the state government removed it all, we wouldn’t change our service levels much.
So I’m off to St. Paul today to discuss municipal finance legislation with our local elected state representatives. It’s sort of like lobbying your cousins. While I’m not optimistic about how the state legislature is working its way through its budget balancing challenges, I’m hoping they won’t negatively impact the financial positions of cities in the process. I would gladly return every dollar of appropriated state financial assistance to Eden Prairie IF the state legislature would free the City from any newly adopted political/financial limitations (i.e. – “strings”) they are considering imposing on cities that accept state financial assistance.
For Eden Prairie, it would be a good bargain to trade money for freedom. Anyday.
