The Future of St. Paul's District Councils

While some of the community councils have tried to do a good job, too may have been the special interest tool of vocal minorities. These councils have exerted undue influence and have interfered with worthwhile projects while purporting to represent the community. Some, such as the Highland Community Council, have been terribly mismanaged and subject to infighting between factions. As a whole the Community Councils have done some limited good, however it is questionable if the successes justify continued taxpayer support.

I agree with Anonymous and his or her comments about some people on Community Councils representing “special interests.”

I am a volunteer in the East Phillips Neighborhood of Mpls. and was very interested in hearing of the virtues and difficulties of your system. Our neighborhood here is very densely populated with an extremely diverse population (about 38% Hispanic, 15%Native American, 10%Somali, 15% African American, 7% Asian, 15% EuroAmerican) over 50% are children or youth and 40% of them live in poverty. We have the major refugee population and new immigrants of every sort.
Because Mpls. neighborhoods are smaller, we do not have the problem of radical differences in the kinds of issues we face. Our organization does not have to try to serve both a middle class homogeneous EuroAmerican area and a very poor ethnically diverse area, where different expectations and needs would pull us in multiple directions. Our organization can develop expertise in alleviating poverty, in finding housing, in help with learning new languages, in helping to cope with government access to supportive funding, in developing a series of translators for our many languages, setting up sports organizations and after school tutoring. We have worked to curb prostitution and drug use and dealing.
We could never develop the unique expertise and tend so closely to the special many needs of these people, if we had to tend to the very different needs of a middle class and homogeneously EuroAmerican area as well. One organization can only do and be so much.
I write this because I have friends who are active in the St. Paul District Councils and one thing I see is the tenacity and health of the smaller districts, but also how the sheer size of the bigger districts is a hindrance to their effectiveness. These people have said as much and been frustrated at the inability to reach out to and respond to such a broad array of economic and ethnic difference because the reach is too big. They embrace areas widely separated economically and culturally and this means the organization is often stretched beyond its capacity to respond to such an array of different wants and needs.
People need to really focus on the area around which they live and collaborate with other areas as needed. They need a size and group of issues they can get their arms around in depth. This is not exclusivity, but the opposite, allowing real interconnectedness on a meaningful scale.
Phillips was once one huge neighborhood and has been split into four pieces. As greater Phillips, basically it was ungovernable. Broken into four smaller pieces, it works. We see the diverse groups coming together as they did not before. Our board is over 50% minority, participation works better, perhaps it is less intimidating and we can focus more clearly on the real needs of people. They don’t get lost in the vastness.
I would suggest that there be more and smaller District Councils in St. Paul, arrayed so that specific areas with like needs are in the same district. I think participation and effectiveness would flourish. We found that it did in Phillips over in Mpls..