Park Board, NAACP meet to address worker grievances as complaints continue to surface

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Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) officials and the Minneapolis NAACP now are meeting to address concerns raisedby Black employees and customers. “I think they are receptive, and I look forward to working with them,” said NAACP President Booker Hodges after his recent meetings with MPRB Superintendent Jayne Miller and Board Chairman John Erwin.The NAACP, who previously investigated “over 60 complaints…and over 100 customers’ complaints,” have recently received an additional 15 complaints from Park Board workers since the MSR January 5 story on employment conditions among MPRB Black employees, said Hodges.“We have been contacted by White employees, too,” he reported. “They say they have the same issues but Blacks have it worse.”The MSR also received several phone calls and emails from present and former Park Board employees. “Racial discrimination and ageism is active” at the MPRB, wrote a current employee (name withheld by request).“We’ve seen it with our own eyes,” said two former Black employees who last week contacted the MSR after reading the article. Both individuals spoke on the condition that their true identities would not be revealed.“Martha” cited examples of mistreatment of Black employees and customers alike by “unprofessional” Park Board management during her nearly three years on the job, such as the time a Black female employee was called “a ghetto girl” by her White supervisor in front of other employees. Continue Reading

Webber Park master plan is underway

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I recently took a chance on the ice of the shallow pond in Webber Park and it held. I did this in anticipation of skating on the pond in the near and cold weeks of January. But to my disappointment I was informed by a park employee that the Webber Pond would not be flooded this winter, the warming house would not be brought in, and it was another blow to my sense of fairness for our community. Skating on the pond, on cold and clear winter nights, with Orion sparkling in the evening sky, is truly one of the delights of winter, and like the pool, it also will be gone in 2012. A simple delight that makes life in a cold winter special; even great. Continue Reading

$1M Van Cleve Park expansion could topple Bunge Tower

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The Southeast Como Improvement Association wants to expand Van Cleve Park and is seeking permission and funding from the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.If the plan goes through, Bunge Tower would be ripped down.The purpose of the proposal is to make up for space lost when the Minneapolis School District built a new baseball field over the summer. Because the field is only for students, residents of Como don’t have the same amount of space in the park that they used to have.“What we’ve been hearing from many residents is that they’ve lost a lot of space,” said Lee Hibbard, vice president of SECIA. She said that Van Cleve Park is the only green space the neighborhood has and that more green space is better than more housing.The expansion proposal eyes the land adjacent to Van Cleve Park that contains the Bunge Tower and old grain silos. The land is owned by Project for Pride in Living.Hibbard said that if the land were acquired, the tower and the silos would be destroyed and replaced with a soccer field or another baseball field. She estimated the cost would be around $1 million.Hibbard said the Bunge Tower site is dangerous because there are a lot of broken windows. Continue Reading