Moderation Policy

I want to share with you my moderating policy for this blog. I did in fact choose to approve comments before they are posted in response to my posts. I did this for three reasons:
1. I don't want this to become overidden by Viagra ads, as some open forums do
2. I want to maintain civil discourse, which does not contain vulgarity
3. I want the dialogue to be focused on ideas and the topics at hand, not on personal attacks

In the history of this blog, I have rejected exactly one (1) comment. It was in a case where the thread had veered far off track and the comment had nothing to do with the original post, but was instead directed at me personally. In all other cases, even those where I disagree with the poster, I gladly approve the post because it contributed to the idea exchange.

As long as comments are not spam, are not vulgar, and are directed at ideas and not at individuals, they WILL be posted as they have been to date.

Sample acceptable comment: "I disagree with your moderation policy. It stifles freedom of speech. If this is a public dialogue, nothing should be moderated."

Sample comment that will be deleted: "Who do you think you are, deciding what gets published -- Lou Grant? You are not going to get any comments if you pull crap like that"

Subtle difference, but it exists. One attacks the idea (fine) and the other focuses on an individual (not fine).

State Releases Ratings on 313 Bridges

The Star Trib has a link on their website to a listing containg 313 bridge sufficiency ratings. While none in our immediate area are included in the report, it is interesting to search by county and see the ratings for several bridges in Carver and Hennepin counties that many of us likely use often. The most concerning one to me: the Highway 41 bridge as it crosses the Minnesota River in Chaska. This bridge built in the 50's has a structural sufficiency rating of 38%, or roughly the bottom 5% of all bridges on this list.

I'll keep an eye out for ratings on area bridges. The ones I can think of, Minnetonka Blvd over St. Albans Bay in Excelsior or Carson Bay in Lake Minnetonka are both very new, as are the Bridges over Grays Bay on Hwy 101 or the Hwy 19 Bridge over the Narrows.

The Minnesota State Fair - In our blood

Occasionally I'll write something on this blog that has little to do with South Lake Minnetonka community affairs. Today will be one such day.

While some people are addicted to the Minnesota State Fair, and others detest it, I'm somewhere in the middle, slightly closer to addicted than detesting. Growing up in a farm family, the fair was not only a major yearly event, but a rite of passage. It was a ceremonial end to a growing season and action-packed harvest (A harvest which, coincidentally, was responsible for our family's livelihood.) With the mental, physicial, and emotional drain that a yearly growing season and harvest brought to a farm family, it was only fitting that a trip to the fair was a perfect way to wrap up an intense summer. There were opportunities to preview new machinery, learn about better farming techniques, see exhibitors bring their best grains and animals from every corner of the state, and visit (or commiserate, if it was a bad year) with other farmers.

Now, as a city dweller, the fair has different meaning to me. It is more of a pilgrimage, a very temporary and focused one-day immersion in all the fair has to offer. The heavy farm overtones of my early years now only make up a portion of my fair experience. I find that I devote more time to looking at landscaping ideas, checking out what the messages du jour are from the various political parties, and trying to find that elusive "State Fair Special" on goods that I've been considering buying during the past year.

I spent a good part of yesterday at the fair. After getting home, I thought about why a state fair is still such a big deal to me and other Minnesotans in 2007. After all, I'm not a fan of crowds, shameless advertising, public restrooms, or food that makes my stomach upset, but the fair has ample dosages of all of those things. The path of least resistance would surely be to stay home and follow my weekend routine: a nice breakfast with a newspaper in hand, quiet family time, a walk, run, or bike ride, maybe some yardwork, catching up on mail, and the enjoyable dilemma of where to go for dinner. But with one August day each year, I choose to take the more exhausting path, the one that will virtually gaurantee I'll have to pay $10 for a bad parking spot, that I will spend no less than 1 of my valuable hours standing in lines, and that I fully realize I'll have indigestion even before I take my first bite of fair cuisine.

To me, the allure of the fair is that it doesn't change. Even those of us who sometimes grow impatient with the lack of adaptation to new concepts and ideas enjoy the day or two when we can go back to a place with complete familiarity. Even though I no longer go to the "all the milk you can drink" stand, I like seeing it still there. Even though it has been years since I've gone down the superslide, it is comforting to know that kids still get a thrill from it. And I've never tried a deep-fried candy bar on a stick, but to me the fair wouldn't be the fair without it. And it is great to see that in this day and age of agriculture becoming a smaller part of our workforce, and large farms taking over the landscape, each county of the state is still well-represented by local youth in competitions involving cattle, sheep, hogs, and grains .

The only thing that seems to change at the fair are the prices, and that should be expected. Otherwise, there is comfort in knowing that you'll see the same thing you saw last year, and you should fully expect to see it there again next year. To me, that is the allure of the State Fair.

South Lake Election Trends, Part 2

As promised, I wanted to provide more detail into the seeming leftward shift of South Lake voters in the past decade. As I mentioned in the first posting on this topic, the South Lake area hasn't exactly become a bastien of liberal support; however, it also doesn't appear as iron-clad red as it did a decade or two ago.


Before I get to South Lake, let's take a look at Edina. It is, after all, in our Congressional District (3), but it also has had an interesting change from 2000 - 2006. In the 2000 Senate election, the one where Mark Dayton defeated Rod Grams overall, Dayton carried 8 of Edina's 20 precincts. In the 2006 Klobuchar vs. Kennedy race, Democrat Klobuchar carried all but 2, or 18 precincts. While Klobuchar easily carried the entire state, this shift in such a historically red suburb is noteworthy -- it indicates that those in Edina will vote based on a particular candidate and political issues, and not just vote for the Republicans. I make this point because I think alot of people assume a city like Edina is a safe zone for Republicans -- not so.


Now let's focus on the South Lake area. Most south lake precincts have typically voted Republican, with the exception of Excelsior which almost always leans Democrat (although they do show support for Tim Pawlenty, voting for him in 2002 and nearly giving him their plurality in 2006). The South Lake area, with its median household income that is over twice that of the state median, has historically held true with the tendancy of wealthier districts to vote Republican (except in Conneticut as the joke goes).


Deephaven had a noticeable shift to the left in 2006. This might hae been because a neighorhood Democrat, Mary Schrock, was running for the state House seat and could have brought supporters out on Election Day. But in the US Senate race, Klobuchar carried Deephaven with 50% and 56% in the two precincts, vs. Dayton's 35% and 38% in 2000. In the State Senate race of the same two elections, the Democratic candidate gained 10 points although they didn't carry the seat. This is a city that voted in the 80% range for the Republican candidate in the 1998 state House election, whereas the Republican candidate only carried 54% of the vote in 2006. It should also be noted that Deephaven has demonstrated an independent streak, being one of the few South Lake precincts that Jesse carried in the 1998 Gubernatorial election.


In Shorewood, two of five precincts voted in Klobuchar's favor last year, but none went Dayton's way in 2000. Look at the percentages for Klobuchar in 2006 - 48, 48, 56, 47, 52. Dayton in 2000 turned in a much softer 43, 36, 36, and 38%. Of the three precincts Klobuchar lost, she lost them by a combined 27 votes. One Shorewood precinct (ward 2, precinct 1) shows Klobuchar winning by 16 points, and the Democrats gaining 11 points in the State Senate between 2002 and 2006. This is also the precinct that has only given Pawlenty 52% and 53% of the vote in his two elections, the closest margins in South Lake except for Excelsior.


As we get into the next election year, more of these stats are to come. But for now, the main point is that a Democrat taking a seat in the South Lake Minnetonka area isn't far-fetched, although it is probably more likely to occur with an open seat (as we saw with the somewhat narrow victory by John Berns in last year's state House race). At this point in time no open seats exist, but that could change. Is this shift just part of the nation leftward movement that we saw in 06 and are still witnessing? Maybe. But will make the local 2008 races ones worth watching.

South Lake's Political Landscape: Are we Democrat, Republican, or in the Midst of a Change?

The 2008 election season is here, and it started about four months ago. Turn on a cable news channel any weeknight, and you are sure to see talking heads speculating if Barack Obama is "black enough" to be the Democratic candidate in 2008, or if Rudy Guliani can ever attract the Republican base with this moderate/liberal leanings on social issues.

Fortunately for us and our local public servants, the spotlight for regional races shouldn't begin shining until the summer of 2008. Heavy primary campaigning for the District 33b House seat didn't begin last year until the August timeframe, just a couple months after Barb Sykora announced her retirement. So we have a good year before we will see much action locally.

An interesting "offseason" activity (if you are a political buff) is to look at local election trends and try to understand any changing dynamics that exist. When looking at local election returns over the past 10 years, one thing jumps out: South Lake tends to not vote as Red as it used to.

As recently as eight years ago, the Republican State Senate candidate was winning with 73% of the vote, and the Republican House candidate was unopposed. In 2006, however, the Republican District 33 Senate candidate won with "just" 59%, and the Repub House candidate won with an uncomfortable 55% margin. Perhaps 2006 was an anomaly of a year, the lowest possible point for Republicans as they saw many seats turnover at the federal and state levels. Maybe the Democrats fielded exceptional candidates in the 2006 local races. Regardless, the area Republicans have to be asking themselves if the margins they saw in 2006 are as low as they can go, or if there are more moderate independents out there who could tip the scales to the other side given a "perfect storm".

The past three elections on the Senate side have seen Gen Olson win handily, but with decreasing margins. In 1998, 2002, and 2006, her respective margins were 73%, 65%, and 59%. Not a good trend for an office in which you would expect the election margins get more secure over time. On the District 33B house side, the recent history has seen Barb Sykora unopposed in 2000 and 2002, then win with 62% of the vote in 2004, and her successor John Berns win with 55% percent of the vote in 2006. What is interesting here isn't the smallish 55% share that Berns received in 2006 (after all, he was a relative unknown running in a wide-open race), but that the district went from being perennially uncontested to being within fathomable Democratic striking distance in such a short period of time.

One has to think that a strong Democratic candidate, coupled with another Republican bloodbath in 2008, could create some uncertainty for this and other seats that have been viewed as Republican safe seats for quite some time.

The next post later this week will focus on the micro trends: In which precincts is the political tide changing the most?

Shorewood Liquor Store Being Sold

The story plastered all over the Lakeshore Weekly News this week is the decision by the Shorewood Council to sell the city's two liquor stores. According to Member Martin Wellens who initiated the action, the city originally got into the business to control the sale of alcohol to minors. Lately, however, the city is competing with private enterprises for market share, and profitability of the liquor stores has been spotty.

This type of issue drives home the question of "how involved should government be" to the most local level. Is city government's role to support infrastructure and provide for public safety? Should government broaden its role and delve into areas where private industry is already thriving? Should government rely on taxes and fees as revenue sources, or is a for-profit business venture a valid source of city government revenue?

My kneejerk reaction on a topic like this is that Government shouldn't be in this or other businesses, for a few reasons:
1. A city government office and a council cannot be a jack-of-all-trades, and it is silly to think that a city government can be highly efficient in things as varied as issuing bulding permits and providing public safety, while tacking on the side-job of dabbling in the retail liquor trade.
2. When government takes over a function, it becomes a monopoly. Government healthcare in Canada is a monopoly. The Department of Motor Vehicles is a monopoly. It is no coincidence that both of those examples foster excessive paperwork and unbearable wait times. Monopolies stifle customer service, innovation, and efficiency. In the end, a monopoly can hardly run as efficiently as multiple, private-sector competitors.
3. There is high risk involved in running a business. It is great that the liquor stores currently add to the city revenue source. But what about the year, or consecutive years, when it loses money? It is acceptable for the public tax dollar to be saved because the money came instead from liquor stores. But would it be OK for the public to subsidize a losing business, if and when that time came? Government revenues, while minimal, should be a near sure-thing -- tax revenue, fee revenue, etc. The profit made from a competitive business involving risk doesn't fit well in the framework of a predictable government revenue stream.

In the end, I think Shorewood will be better off by operating in a "lean and mean" government environment rather than attempting to have their fingers in private industry.

Thoughts, especially from those of you in Shorewood?

South Lake Minnetonka Restaurant Scene: Healthy from a layman's perspective

When you look at the South Lake Minnetonka business climate, a sector that seems to be doing well is the restaurant industry. Just to let you know how un-qualified I am to comment on this, I am purely an observer / customer like most of you. I don't know alot about the innards of the restaurant industry, nor do I have access to any financials of local eateries.

According to The Ohio State University, the failure rate for independent restaurants after 3 years is 57%, and for franchises is 61%. That tells me that the odds are slightly against any restaurant who tries to make a go of it. And I would assume that you can look at how busy an establishment is, and assuming that more customers and a packed house are generally good, anecdotally estimate how a place is doing. I of course don't know the operating costs and other profit / loss factors, but I'm just assuming that busy = good.

That brings me to the South Lake restaurant scene. This is very unscientific and I will undoubtedly leave some good restaurants out, but I see the following restaurants that have opened in the past few years:
- Jake O'Connor's -- appears to be busy, was really packing them in during the winter
- Hazellewood Tap and Grille - has been busy most times I've been there, appears to have captured the neighborhood crowd
- Joey Nova's - seems to be a great addition to the area at its price point, not always packed but appears to do a robust takeout and delivery business
- Biella - for how pricey it is, I've been impressed with how full it seems to be. Can't argue with the food creativity and quality -- top notch.
- Big Bucks Roadhouse - haven't personally been there, but have heard good things
- 318 Cafe - not a new restaurant, but new ownership in recent years. There are always people in there, and getting named Best Neighborhood Eatery by Twin Cities Magazine was quite an honor

Then you have the ones that have left the area recently, which by my count are:
- Pizza Hut - A victim of (eventual) redevelopment, and not a huge loss
- Lakeshore Deli - Another victim of the same redevelopment, and I'd love to see them open up again. Very underrated place for a sandwich.
- Sidney's - Getting a little ways away from Lake Minnetonka, but I'm guessing lots of Deephaven / Greenwood / Excelsior / Tonka Bay / Shorewooders frequented it. By all accounts I've heard, it was more a factor of legal problems than lack of business, but that is all I know.

Of course, we don't want to slight the old standbys that seem to be doing just fine, like Maynards, Snuffys, and Beanhaven. But this post is more about which places have come and gone recently.

In a nutshell, I see a score of 6-3: 6 recent successes vs. 3 closures, and 2 of those were due to real estate redevelopment. Overall, I think there is a pretty healthy restaurant scene in the area.

I'm interested in readers thoughts on what else we need in the area. I have my running list of places that I think would do very well in Deephaven, Excelsior, Shorewood, or Tonka Bay -- I think they would be popular from the moment they opened their doors:
1. A good breakfast place. Sorry Hilltop, but I'd like to see an Original Pancake style place move in nearby. I think they would thrive. Beanhaven has great quality breakfasts, but is small and can fill up in an instant.
2. A good D'Amico-style deli. Rumor has it that a deli might open that would be run by and affiliated with Jake O'Connor's. Lets only hope. They seem to be a good restaurant and would probably do a nice job with a deli.
3. A comfort-food place like the Edina Grill or Highland Park Grill. I think they would pack them in. The niche would be a slight step down in cost and class from a Hazellewood but a step up from my envisioned D'Amico.

For the record, I'm not only endorsing the aforementioned chains expanding to our area. I'd love for an independent, unique place to open up as well. I list the chain examples above since people are familiar with them and can picture them easily.

Other thoughts? What other types of places do you think our area would support? I realize that in the case of Excelsior, parking is a limiting factor, but lets save that divisive topic for another post.

Jim Ramstad's Town Hall Meeting

Jim Ramstad will begin his series of summer Town Hall meetings tomorrow, with a forum at the Minnetonka City Hall. The Forum will take place at noon, and there is a 2nd area forum in Mound at 7pm.

These Town Hall meetings are a great chance to see the Congressman and ask your questions. The typical format is Congressman Ramstad giving a 10-15 minute presentation on current capitol hill activities, and then opening up the remainder of the hour for Q&A. You get a combination of very specific questions along with some more general topics of discussion.

What Congressman Ramstad does by having these forums is somewhat unique. We might take it for granted, but it is not part of a Congressperson's job description to have these Town Hall forums. I don't know for sure, but I would guess it is a small fraction of our Representatives that even have these forums. In the case of Ramstad, he knows very well that there will be groups from Move On and other organized movements who are there to heckle him, but he still shows up and opens himself up to questions and criticism. I respect that.

It is good that we have a Congressman who values dialogue with constituents above staying safe in an office behind staffers. It is also good that during a month of highly publicized Congressional recess, our Congressman is using part of his vacation to make the rounds in his district.

Fooled by Google Analytics

An excellent (some would say fascinating) service from Google (who happens to own and control the ".blogspot.com" domain) is a feature called Google Analytics. It allows anyone with a website or blog to receive statistics on traffic to their site. Don't worry, it doesn't tell me who is reading my blog, only how many people view it each day, which information they view the most, and if they came via Google, how they got to my blog.

So you can imagine my excitement when I saw a massive spike in traffic on Friday... nearly 3-fold! I immediately began thinking that my blog was catching on, that I must have had exposure on some other popular blog that was routing traffic to the blog, like The Huffington Post pointing out this interesting, local civic blog in the Twin Cities. Or better yet, word of mouth was starting to tell a good story about what we're doing here.

Then, I dug into the numbers. I realized that the spike in traffic could be accounted for exclusively by people looking for last minute info on the Tour de Tonka. Google was able to tell me that my above average numbers were largely due to people typing "Tour de Tonka" in to Google.

Well, maybe I'm not the next Tom Friedman or Garrison Keillor with a loyal following developing, but I guess I'm still thankful that Google routed a few people my way. Maybe a couple of them liked what they saw and will come back again. And if I could at least be a public service to help push the Tour, then I'm pleased.

And for the record, the readership on this blog is actually doing quite well so far. The number of total visits is now into the hundreds, and the number of unique visitors is well into the dozens. All in all, I'm pleased with the traffic on this blog in the first couple weeks of its life.

Excelsior Sidewalk Maintenance

A topic gaining visibility in Excelsior is that of sidewalk maintenance. Specifically, the question is the age-old one of who pays for it. The Excelsior Council has been grappling with this issue for over a year, when they decided to have the bad slabs in the business district replaced. This year, it is time to focus on the residential neighborhoods, and the decision (so far) is to have the homeowners adjacent to the bad slabs pay for their replacement.

There are many points of view on this. The most extreme is that we don't need sidewalks at all, and they shouldn't be replaced. Given that many people who are buying homes in towns like Excelsior were looking for "a town with sidewalks", this would seem like a big step backward.

The next point of view, and one that makes some sense, is that the entire city should pay for the sidewalk replacement. Why? Because the sidewalks are on city property, not private property, and because the sidewalks are really there for everyone to enjoy, not just the person who lives near the sidewalk.

The third point of view is the current prevailing one, that the homeowner adjacent to the sidewalk is responsible for its upkeep, much like the policy for clearing snow in the winter. There is merit to this approach as well, because actions that the homeowner takes can affect the sidewalk (construction projects, poor snow removal techniques, poor landscaping and grading).

This topic will be addressed in a Council work session coming up soon. As for me, I just hope we get the project done. The quality of the sidewalks in Excelsior is poor, and the City was right for making sidewalk replacement a priority.

Bridge Collapse

Topics like boat docks and noisy motorcycles seem very petty in light of the I-35W bridge collapse. There isn't anything I can write here that can really do justice to the impact of that collapse on our community. Our thoughts are with the victims, first responders, and the Twin Cities area as we deal with this tragedy.

Our Lake is Low

Any veteran of Lake Minnetonka knows that the water level often gradually decreases throughout the summer. Rocks that were covered in may are exposed in August, and dock spaces that had plenty of depth in June are getting pretty shallow by September.

This year, however, is an extreme year. Down 1 foot and counting. Check out this post from The Admiral at the moundmn blog...

http://moundmn.blogspot.com/2007/08/lake-level-down-1.html

Tour de Tonka, 2007

Add the Tour de Tonka to a long list of South Lake events for active folks that are gaining popularity.

Organizers believe that this year's Tour could draw nearly 1,000 people if the weather holds. I personally have seen bike groups as far away as Iowa and Wisconsin pushing the Tour as a fun event in a great area. Proceeds benefit the ICA Foodshelf.

Events like the Tour de Tonka, Lake Minnetonka Triathlon, Wenmark Legends 10K, and Excelsior Firecracker Run bring a good group of people to the area. I think they are a different group than would otherwise come for events like the 4th of July or Art on the Lake. My experience is that people who come to the South Lake area for active pursuits are courteous, appreciative, and might not have otherwise had a reason to come out this far west of the city.

Join me in being a good host to these visitors, and showing off the Lake Minnetonka area. Better yet, do a ride yourself. The shortest one is a 15-miler, which nearly anyone can do if you have a decent quality bike.

http://minnetonka.registryinsight.com/ittrium/servlet/visit