Minneapolis Parks Funding

This is an update to something a wrote about in February (it seemed long ago enough to warrant a new post instead of an addendum). The Minneapolis City Council recently passed a major funding bill that Mayor Hodges signed to fix and update park and recreation center facilities over a 20 year period. It will be funded by a one-time property tax increases and some smaller levies but will provide a designated stream of maintenance funding for two decades. This is a huge deal. While time will tell if the funding is sufficient (and also if the city will now view its duties as fulfilled), locking in funds for parks and ensuring that it isn't an unfunded mandate to be paid for "somehow" or by cuts in services is rare and noteworthy. An alternative method would have been to take advantage of historically low interest rates and pass a bonding bill, but those are more complex and challenging (and potentially even more controversial than property tax changes). Either way, I'm pleased with this development and hope that it is a sign that Minneapolis will be continuing to make commitments to and investments in its world class parks system.

Additional note, this will be my last post in the series for my real estate course, though for any readers I have picked up, I do hope to keep this going now that I've restarted, on a fairly regular basis. I have a number of places I've visited since I left off writing that I'd like to review and am constantly coming up with other little ideas, so hopefully this won't trail off. I don't know what the frequency will be, but I intend to find or make time to do at least a little bit of posting. I'll also probably return to a more explicitly public lands and parks focus, though, this being my personal blog, I reserve the right to talk about whatever else I want (but mostly property, land and environment, because that's what I like). I'm also going to be starting a fellowship with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service soon working on wetland acquisitions, so I'm excited to start that, combining my legal, geographic, mapping, and real estate knowledge in the service of environmental preservation and biodiversity. Pretty good stuff.