Interesting to read how the token “community” bits—ball fields and such—are falling by the wayside to preserve the shimmer on the diamond-to-be, the private whY.
It’s laughable if not perverse to hear how we must now be “so so careful with taxpayers money” when just seemingly yesterday multiple millions were being tossed about like candy in a parade. Learn-as-you-go apparently teaches frugality only towards the bottom of the barrel.
But seemingly we’re not there yet, as I watch the concrete trucks arriving from Duluth. Reminiscent of the low bid hijinks at the double cost library. And where might Duluth workers building the co-op and Tennessee/California workers installing the broadband squeeze all their mileage costs from? Low bid often is cheap only in quality. Who knows what fabulous dollarstretching is sure to surface at the whY, especially after the brilliance of demolishing before contract to rebuild. As in, grab here, the hairs are shorter.
While elsewhere, stodgy knuckle draggers still cling—cling I say—to that stale, passé ‘sustainability’ thing of local, community and self nurturance, it is clear we are so much wiser. Here the new-hip “diversity” prevails as we scatter our 1percent stardust hither and yon. Captain Kirk would be proud.
Look, I do not begrudge jobbers trying to feed their families, no matter their address. God bless them for their toil. But I cannot be sanguine when bid after bid sustains other communities before our own. When a supposed “community” center is built seemingly by anyone other than its own.
There is something drastically wrong when our leadership, beyond its mouthwash, lacks the imagination, energy and/or commitment to provide a level if not even preferential playing field for local talents. The powerlessness and open disdain shown by our leadership for its constituency is deplorable.
Oops, just coffee shop blather, move along, nothing to see…
Vilnis Neilands
Grand Marais
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