The Blog from City Hall

As part of our Business Meet & Greet program, the Mayor and I and several staff members are paying a visit to Midwest Asphalt. We established the Meet & Greet program to better connect City officials with the business community. We typically do 2-3 visits each week. The program has been quite successful in raising the stature of the City in the business community. We have also benefitted by learning more about the wide continuum of economic activities going on in our community everyday.

But back to Midwest Asphalt…..

The City hasn’t had what you’d call a good relationship with Midwest Asphalt over the years. Midwest Asphalt makes building and paving materials. Their operations are loud, dusty, and unattractive, and they are located adjacent to a residential neighborhood. They’ve got the necessary regulatory approvals to operate their business in their current location. They are a necessary component of our economy. Their products are in demand by both the public and private sectors. People want more roads. People want better driveways.

But they annoy some of their neighbors, and it’s not without cause. They occupy an area that has great potential for redevelopment. That might be on their minds as well. So we’ll meet with them today and see what their future is in Eden Prairie.

We’ve now added RSS to this weblog. What’s RSS?

“Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable “What’s New” for your site.” See Intro to RSS for more info.

The XML icon in the signup box for the Weblog Email Digest is the cue that we’re RSS capable.

So you can now subscribe to Scott Neal’s weblog via content aggregators like Amphetadesk, NewzCrawler, NetNewsWire (Mac), and others.

In this morning’s Star Trib there was an article describing the budget cuts Minneapolis is inflicting on itself in order to prepare for the upcoming slash of the financial aid that it, and many other cities around the state, receive from the state. The Police Department alone in Minneapolis is cutting $7,000,000 from its current year budget. Ouch. The Chief’s proposal to the City Council is to reduce the force by 67 employees; 25 police officers and 42 civilians.

Eden Prairie doesn’t receive much state aid and we expect to lose 100% of it. Minneapolis was scheduled to receive $111,000,000 in state aid this year. We were scheduled to receive $172,000 in state aid this year. For us, that’s less than 1% of our General Fund operating budget for 2003. I’m not sure what the % loss is for Minneapolis, but I’m sure it’s in excess of 25% for 2003.

Earlier this week I shared my 2003 budget reduction plan with our City Council and employees in Eden Prairie. We will be reducing our 2003 operating budgets in our operating departments anywhere from 1% to 4.5%. Our cuts are marginal reductions and do not reduce the service levels that we planned for this year. In fact, we are planning to proceed with hiring two new police officers, a new fire inspector, and a new park maintenance worker this year.

Our City is not lucky to be in the position, but it is fortunate. Past City Councils and city staff have positioned the City well for the future. It’s times like these where you can really see that.

Greetings.

My name is Scott Neal, and I compose The Blog from City Hall. Kind of an ominous name for a weblog, but I’ll try it for a while and see how it fits.

Among other things in my life, I am the City Manager for the City of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. If you are reading this blog and you are a resident of Eden Prairie, then this weblog (or “blog” as the kids like to say) is for you. If you’re an employee of the City of EP, this blog is for you too.

If you don’t fit into either of those catagories, then you’re welcome to stick around and see what goes on here, but you’re not my target audience. Some of the things that I’ll talk about will be discussed in loca dialect so that the discussion can feel more intimate for my target audience. So, anyone is welcome, but please understand the people for whom I am writing - they happen to be the same people that pay my salary!

I’ll try to get into this blog every other day or so to update it. I’m including no news in this post. More tomorrow.

Until then,