Government Crap

Inver Grove Heights is a great place to live, owning a business has been another story. There are a lot of very good people that live, work and own businesses here; unfortunately most of them may be as naive as I was about the possible mismanagement, corruption and incompetence that may have taken place from the former Mayor, Joe Atkins, the former City Administrator, Jim Willis, and the current Mayor, George Tourville. The people that may have known what was going on would not come forward for fear of retaliation against them, their job or their business.

Because of all the possible mismanagement, corruption and incompetence our city is many years behind on expanding new infrastructure for new businesses, replacing roads, fixing roads and maintenance to what could have been salvageable. We should have had a city hall expansion and a new fire station out by Rich Valley Boulevard many years ago. Now the cost of a city hall expansion alone will be three times the cost it could have been. The thing is it is needed, I toured the current facility and they are short on space. This could be a very small portion of why they are so dysfunctional.

Instead of doing what was needed Mayor Atkins, at that time, convinced the Council to build a Golf Course, an Aquatic Center, Rich Valley Park and sink money into the development of Heritage Park. All of which are costly sink holes, requiring extra staff and maintenance sucking up lots of tax dollars to build and maintain. The upper portion of the Heritage Park could have stayed Industrial land, been sold to businesses to generate tax base, then turning the lower portion, where it is considered flood plains, into the park and the funds could have come from park dedication fee’s from the new businesses, not at taxpayer’s expense from IGH residents and all the taxpayer’s of the state of Minnesota through pork spending.

Unfortunately the damage has been done. At least we got a new City Administrator in 2007. I believe we still need to watch the city staff and help them make more common sense decisions, so we don’t have a repeat. It is my opinion staff tends to work on pet projects and don’t do what is needed to be done to maintain and improve our infrastructure.

There also needs to be a complete assessment of all city employee’s (titles, duties and salaries) and city enterprises (e.g. Parks & Recreation). City government shouldn’t be in any business competing against the private sector or the schools to try to earn revenue to cover up short falls. The city also shouldn’t be one of the largest employers.

After being involved in what I believe to be their web of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence I have learned to believe there are other very questionable things that may have taken place. There may still be a couple of city employee’s that should be relieved of their duties, to help make the process of  making our city government more productive, competent, honest and for it to work for all the taxpayers and business. Not the special interests of a couple people’s agenda’s and egos’.