Making Sense out of Non-sense Council Majority Doles Out
The agreement does not allow the city or council members acting in official capacity to OPPOSE the expansion. But, it says nothing about requiring them to go out and actively lobby for federal funds. Before Young took office, there were no funds. After Young took office there were no funds. Several months into his tenure, the city lobbied for the funds. That's a 180o change in direction from the neutral position the city adopted after the Final Agreement.
1. The city manager does not make policy and serves the elected officials who hire them.
2. The council with new leadership went beyond their required obligation to the Final Agreement’s stipulations and actively sought federal funding on behalf of MAC.
3. The emails obtained through the FOIA process to the city proved that the city manager acted on that CHANGE one day after the Eden Prairie Chamber of Commerce held a meeting March 6, 2008 that was attended by Mayor Young, MAC and city employees in which the discussion was focused on partnering to obtain funding for the longer runway, because there was no MONEY for this project. It's evident from Tim Anderson's email and the Chamber meeting minutes that MAC did not have funding for the longer runway and was not going to be able to obtain the funding without city support.
Summary
Scott Neal rescinded his original letter to legislatures in summer of 2007. But the damage had been done. The city council majority voted against a Resolution of Neutrality, brought up by Sherry Butcher, which would have confirmed the city's neutral position to the expansion.
The city didn't violate the agreement by asking our legislators for federal funding, they violated the public's trust and changed a long standing position of neutrality toward the expansion. Further, the Mayor and Brad Aho made statements that are contrary to the events that took place. How could that be? Butcher and Nelson both stated that there was a perceived change of direction. Neither Phil Young, nor Aho or Duckstad felt that there was a change of direction. Both Young and Aho made statements which did not support the action that was taken by the city manager. How could this be? Young stated Neal's letter was a "ministerial action" and that the "city and council had not taken a leadership role." 5-10-07
On March 29, 2007 EPSUN- Young states that "no one is advocating changing the agreement which he says represents a spirit of cooperation between city and MAC that did not previously exist and that relationship needs to be preserved."
March 29, 2007 EPN, Aho said he didn’t have a problem with the letter that was sent to legislators, "I don’t see that the council or the city has preformed or done anything that would be contrary to the agreement that we have and that should be viewed as negative by the citizens, either people that are for or against the airport. It’s not something that needs retraction," he said.
It is clear that both Young and Aho side-stepped any direct response to the question of whether the city actively lobbied for federal funding, thus changing the direction of the council from one of neutrality toward the expansion to one of support for the expansion. Mayor Young called the action, the city manager’s mistake. None of us are that gullible that we’d ever believe that Neal acted alone without some direction from the Mayor and or the council.
The agreement doesn't include a stipulation requiring the city or the council to lobby for federal funds. Remaining neutral toward the expansion was the city's posture until Young took office. Remember the city spent $750,000 to fight the expansion on behalf of residents, not the Chamber, not MAC. And after the agreement was signed council members were allowed to fight it on their own, but not as representatives of the city. So, whether there was an agreement in place really had no bearing on whether there would ever be an expansion. There had to be money and there wasn’t for the longer runway, which was the most contentious aspect of the project.
Until Young became Mayor, council members maintained a neutral position toward the expansion; no one would have dreamt of writing letters to Legislators for federal funding because the old council fought against the expansion and supported residents in staying neutral. The city and council were neutral till Phil Young became Mayor. Supported by Brad Aho and Jon Duckstad there was now a profound change in attitude toward the airport and Scott Neal only reflected that change.
Analysis Of Events-Chamber Of Commerce 051907 (doc) Recent Summary Of Events 2007 (pdf)
If the 5,000ft runway goes through we can all thank the new council leadership.
Call your local elected officials, state and national legislators and tell them no taxpayer dollars for an unecessary expansion that was funded through the deceptive efforts of Eden Prairie's council leadership.
City Manager Statement from 2004--
How ironic it is that in 2007 the industry was even less flush, so Neal lobbied our national legislators for money at the behest of our new council leadership.
Eden Prairie City Manager's Online Blog
http://edenprairieweblogs.org/scottneal/
Wednesday, September 15, 2004
Flying Cloud Airport
"The airline industry is not flush right now, so all this discussion of expansion may just be for naught."
Scott Neal
http://zeroexpansion.com/more_talktrans.html#econRole