Stimulus money to build skateboard park? Waste or public investment?

It takes a lot of money to upgrade the water meters in 13,000 homes:  $3.5 million dollars to be exact.

St. Louis Park has been trying to get it done for years.  "It's been in our capital plan, but we just haven't had the funding to get it done," says Thomas Harmening, St. Louis Park city manager.
 
The meter project seemed like a natural when the U.S. Conference of Mayors asked cities to submit projects that could be funded with federal economic stimulus dollars.

St. Louis Park got on a list all right: a list of projects the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota calls the state's ten worst economic stimulus requests.

"Frankly this is embarrassing," said The Freedom Foundation's' Tom Steward. "This is not an economic stimulus request this is a wish list.  A local government wish list."

Among the requests on the list: $750,000 dollars for a skateboard park in St. Cloud, $750,000 for new street lights in Hanover and $6 million for snow making equipment and a maintenance facility at Spirit Mountain in Duluth.  All are examples, according to The Freedom Foundation, of embarrassing requests.

Roseville's $1.5 million request for a new clubhouse and maintenance shop for the city-run Cedarholm Golf Course also made The Freedom Foundation's list.   City manager Bill Malinen defended the request as an investment in a community asset.  "We can talk about the youth, we can talk about seniors, we can talk about people who can't afford to play a private course."

Burnsville made the Freedom Foundation's list too.   But City Manager Craig Ebeling says upgrades to a city wading pool will not only benefit the public but will provide "work that somebody is going to have to do."   

Hy Berman sees it from a historical perspective.  The U of M history professor emeritus says Depression era stimulus programs such as FDR's Works Progress Administration went will beyond building roads and bridges.

"The WPA had projects for the arts, for music, for writers, for teachers, even for historians like me who are out of work because they had to eat too," says Berman. 

To carry the argument forward, the people who build water meters also have to eat. Harmening points out the city's contractor "has to purchase 13,000 pieces of equipment" that have to be built and installed.

Still, if money's going to be spent, Steward believes it should go toward roads and bridges and "the things that are going to put people back to work and be long-term investments."
 
Stimulus or embarrassment?  The debates goes on.

By Boyd Huppert, KARE 11 News

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