Green Party Candidate
for Mayor of St. Paul
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Green Party Candidate |
For Immediate Release September 7, 2005
Elizabeth Dickinson's Statement on Development and Community Benefit Agreements St. Paul, MN – Monday, September 12, 2005 – Elizabeth Dickinson visited Kellogg Park this morning, and, standing at a portable lectern near the Wabasha St. bridge, issued the following statement. Good morning. We're standing above the Mississippi, and behind me across the River is the site for the proposed Bridges of St. Paul project. Diagonally across the street is City Hall. There's a pretty direct connection between the two, so this seems like a good spot to talk about development in St. Paul — and how we might be able to manage development so people and neighborhoods have more of a voice in it, and get more out of it. The Bridges of St. Paul would be a kind of mini-city — potentially, a competing mini-city when it comes to filling office space and hotel rooms . By some estimates, the project will add 25 to 50,000 car trips a day…and one to two tons a day of asthma-causing pollution, and more air quality alerts. As planned, The Bridges features a 30-story hotel near an area where the plan developed by the West Side's District Council, and its own citizens and business people, calls for a height limitation about a quarter of that. What's wrong with this picture? It reminds me of the Playa Vista project near the Los Angeles airport, another, even larger mini-city that would have added 200,000 car trips per day — and an estimated ten tons of smog-related pollution — to the area's streets and freeways. That project was started about ten years ago. I say, "started," because it wasn't finished quite the way the developer had planned: the citizens took so much exception to it that people literally chained themselves to bulldozers. In the end, the project was cut by about two-thirds, most of a priceless wetland was saved, and the developer wound up wasting years of his time and millions of dollars that he could have saved if he had simply bothered to sit down and negotiate reasonably and in good faith with the people who lived in the area his project was going to affect. Well, this isn't L.A., we don't need another Playa Vista here in St. Paul. So, let's talk about a different way of doing business. Let's talk about genuine negotiation. And let's talk about Community Benefit Agreements, and how they are now used from Los Angeles to San Jose to Denver to New Haven to Milwaukee to improve everything from minority hiring to environmental impacts. Community Benefit Agreements, or CBAs, can be the key component of a carrot-and-stick approach to development that has the potential to make things better, and easier, for everyone — developers and neighborhoods and average citizens, all at the same time. Here are two examples: In Los Angeles — perhaps inspired by the problems at Playa Vista — the developers of a billion-dollar downtown hotel and entertainment complex sat down in 2001 with a community group coalition who were prepared to oppose the project. Together they hammered out an agreement that legally requires the developers to hire locally and offer job training; to pay a living wage; to establish a resident permit-parking program in the surrounding, low-income neighborhood; and to build both affordable housing and new parks. The Los Angeles Times described this CBA as "the first of its kind nationwide to take such a broad array of community concerns into account." In Milwaukee, it took a lengthy effort by a coalition — and ultimately, legislation passed at the county level — to get a CBA attached to the sale of county-owned land in an area where a little-used highway spur had been demolished. The Park East Redevelopment Compact addresses concerns including good jobs, in both construction and "end use;" minority participation; affordable housing; local hiring and job training; environmental issues; and community involvement and accountability. Establishing a CBA through legislation, while effective, is a last recourse: it's better and easier for everyone if an agreement can be reached through reasonable negotiation without involving lawmakers in the process. The point in both these cases is that the people most directly affected by development had a say in the shape of the development and in how it was carried out. It wasn't necessarily easy for the citizens to get a seat at the table — in Milwaukee, for example, it took tremendous effort, patience, and community organization — but eventually, they had a voice. And nobody had to chain themselves to a bulldozer or a developer's door. Now, isn't that a good thing? Well-negotiated Community Benefit Agreements are a reasoned, fair approach that can help a developer get a project off the ground more quickly, a community feel like a partner instead of an adversary, and a city government feel like a helpful facilitator instead of the referee at a wrestling match. That's a win-win-win. And that's what I'd like for St. Paul. Throughout my campaign I've returned again and again to the idea that neighborhoods and the people who live in them must have access to the corridors of power, and their ideas and concerns must be taken seriously and factored into the decisions of city government. I've promised to give citizens that access, that kind of fairness, if I am elected mayor. I've also looked for ways to extend fairness in raising the money St. Paul has to have if it is to be a capital city worthy of the name: whether it's increased franchise fees for Xcel Energy, with protection for low-income ratepayers, or finding some other way to tax progressively instead of falling back on regressive property taxes and fees that hurt the poor disproportionately harder than the rich. And I've insisted that the city must — for its own long-term good — keep up its parks and playgrounds, and libraries, and keep them open, so that children of every income level have places to go and things to do that keep them constructively active and out of harm's way. Fairness and justice and the public's safety are completely interconnected, the way I see it. Randy Kelly has a slick brochure — one of several I've received from him, and I'm sure you've seen them, too — in which he claims to have a vision for St. Paul. Well, I have a vision for St. Paul, too. Mine is a little different from Randy's. In my vision, St. Paul is the Clean Energy Capital of the Upper Midwest. It's also the fairness capital. In his vision, he gets to veto a property tax increase that doesn't even cover the last few years inflation. If you live in St. Paul, Randy is about to make it that much harder for your city councilmember to do what needs to be done for your part of town. In Randy's political universe it seems no good deed goes unpunished. In my vision, that modest tax increase would help ensure that neighborhoods can repair playgrounds or host great projects like skateboard parks or arts initiatives. And in my vision, St. Paul is a place whose neighborhoods are deeply committed to the city as a whole, because all of them are fully involved in planning for development and in shaping the future. That's the kind of city I want to live in, and that's the kind of city I want to lead. Sometimes my vision seems a long way off. Right now we live in a city where developers and big corporations get sweetheart deals that include variances and city subsidies with next to nothing asked in return, while Randy gets to veto a needed tax increase and claim he's fiscally responsible. That's exactly what I want to change. So I'm asking people to go to the polls tomorrow and cast a vote for a vision and a vote for fairness. It's a primary election, and I hear it's going to rain, but I hope people care enough about St. Paul to put on their raincoats and go outside anyway. We're lucky to be here, and our rain isn't that bad. Ask anyone from New Orleans. We're blessed. So I hope everyone will vote. And thank you. I'm glad I've had this chance to run, to listen to the publics concerns, and to share my vision of St. Paul with so many good and caring people. Thanks for your time. Contact Elizabeth Dickinson, (651) 235-1208 (cell) Mary Petrie, Campaign Manager, (651) 226-3527 (cell) Christopher Childs, Communications Coordinator, (651) 312-1216 Elizabeth Dickinson for Mayor 384 Hall Avenue St. Paul, MN 55107
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Click here to read the pre-event press release.
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