Politics, it appears, ain’t so local no more. Running against President Obama supposedly helped catapult Tea Party Republicans into local offices all across the country in the last election season. Maybe the same kind of strategy could work for City Council candidates (of all political stripes) in St. Paul?
That appears to be the case in at least a couple of instances…
Downtown art framer Bill Hosko isn’t running for election on St. Paul’s East Side, but that hasn’t stopped him from throwing in against the proposed Payne-Maryland ”Town Square” project, a favorite of Council Member Dan Bostrom.
Hosko, who is running for the downtown Ward 2 seat held by Council Member Dave Thune, showed up Wednesday night outside the community meeting at the Arlington Hills Lutheran Church on Greenbrier Street handing out double-sided pages of anti-Town Square literature.
The proposed $14 million East Side recreation center and library may not be in Hosko’s ward, but he doesn’t care. He aims to block it at every turn. His lit calls out Bostrom by name, decrying the price and process behind a project that the council member and others see as a badly-needed boon to East Side youth. In other words, it’s Hosko vs. Bostrom (for Thune’s seat…)
While we’re talking about the downtown area and the Ward 2 election, an August 16 missive from council candidate Cynthia Schanno seems to target Mayor Chris Coleman as much, if not more, than Thune.
Schanno said she’s not happy with the mayor’s proposed 6.5 percent increase to the city tax levy… she wants a property tax freeze.
Meanwhile, city department leaders say even with the 6.5 percent tax levy increase, they’d have to make staff vacancies permament and resort to perhaps 20 lay-offs. The good times are long gone.