Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Silophant » March 4th, 2017, 12:58 am

Of course, if St. Paul merged with Ramsey County, Minneapolis would have to gobble up at least enough Hennepin suburbs to keep its "largest city" title.

Though, to be sure, loss of LGA or any other scenario that led the Ramsey suburbs to merge with St. Paul would also presumably affect St. Anthony Village and Richfield and so on.
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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby VAStationDude » March 4th, 2017, 4:22 am

None of this will ever happen but I'm sure does the trick as mental masturbation when bored with swlrt whining.

State law provides that municipal merger proceedings begin by resolution of the affected city councils or by petition of each city's residents.

In what world would citizens of Edina or st Anthony stand for merging with Minneapolis? My read on suburbs like falcon Heights is they like their small residential character and government. Why would they merge and become a tiny part of a big city? If a small city's tax base is poor the big city won't want them.

Eliminating lga or fiscal disparities will exacerbate the above issues not encourage mergers

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby sdho » March 6th, 2017, 10:32 pm

In what world would citizens of Edina or st Anthony stand for merging with Minneapolis? My read on suburbs like falcon Heights is they like their small residential character and government. Why would they merge and become a tiny part of a big city? If a small city's tax base is poor the big city won't want them.
It's harder to see the path to this with most reasonable cities we might picture merging being fully developed. To read the narrative of how northern Richfield was annexed into Minneapolis, it was largely desire for amenities that Richfield didn't provide at the time -- like street lights, sewers, and sidewalks. Apparently, Minneapolis was willing to take them because of the potential for growth.

But to have any real chance, I don't think it would work for Minneapolis or St. Paul to simply absorb smaller cities into the existing blob. I think it would have to go along with a serious reorganization of the structure of city government -- likely one that provides more autonomy to individual city districts than the current neighborhood org structure.

From my point of view as a Richfield resident, there are a handful of things I like that Minneapolis does well that I'd like to see in Richfield: lots more sidewalks, and through MPRB, great park amenities and boulevard tree coverage. On the other hand, there are great things Richfield has done as a small, motivated city that just don't seem to happen in Minneapolis -- like the Best Buy project, like getting federal funds to buy out the isolated neighborhoods in the airport area (while Minneapolis has left their airport blocks, completely disconnected from the rest of the city).

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby talindsay » March 7th, 2017, 11:28 am

Any "merger" would have to involve a borough model, where the "city" was essentially a regional government that devolved most powers to the individual "boroughs" while providing benefits of scale for purchasing, contracts, sewer, water, waste removal, etc. That seems unrealistic here because the State of Minnesota, and its regional surrogates the Met Council, already handle all those things without the formal structure of a borough-city arrangement. Anything for which outlying municipalities might otherwise look to the central city, are provided to them either directly by the State or through the Met Council here. As much as we might like the parlor-trick of city-county merger or full-on reorganization into a borough-city model, Minnesota has already chosen a different route to providing those services that doesn't involve the fiction of a huge federated city.

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby twincitizen » March 7th, 2017, 12:04 pm

While I suppose it is possible that some microburbs (e.g. Falcon Hts, Lauderdale, St. Anthony) would merge with their "parent" city, it seems far more likely that they would first explore banding together to provide services, as the above-mentioned cities already do for Police services. I could see more suburbs adopting this shared-services model in many more departments beyond just Public Safety, Health Dept, etc.

If LGA and Fiscal Disparities disbursements were to shrink significantly for economically disadvantaged 1st-ring suburbs like South St. Paul & West St. Paul, Crystal & New Hope, etc., I could see those suburbs start by progressively sharing more services/departments to the point where they eventually decide to merge.

If both programs went away, I can't see how a Lauderdale would have any choice but to merge immediately. The other option would be raising property taxes sharply. I doubt too many residents would support doubling their property taxes in order to retain a sovereign Lauderdale over merging with Falcon, Roseville or St. Paul. Specifically looking at Lauderdale, I could honestly see its fortunes rising as people are completely priced out of NE Mpls and St. Anthony Park (St. Paul neighborhood), etc. As a separate city though (and with an ugly name like Lauderdale) it just seems like it falls off the map for most buyers, despite the excellent location (ridiculously close to the U, NE breweries, University & Raymond, Rosedale area, etc.)

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby sdho » March 7th, 2017, 12:38 pm

As a separate city though (and with an ugly name like Lauderdale) it just seems like it falls off the map for most buyers, despite the excellent location (ridiculously close to the U, NE breweries, University & Raymond, Rosedale area, etc.)
I wonder how much name and branding impact people. Certainly, lots of new SFH development in "Savage" and "Champlin", two names I would rank below Lauderdale in what I'd want in my address.

I've got some friends who bought a fairly large house there -- but only got introduced to the city having rented a very cheap there for many years prior. It is an awesome location, but is so small, it really falls down on city services. Limited city government, almost no street lights, a single park, no sidewalks on *any* city street, even busy Eustis and Roselawn. But yeah, proximity to Northeast and St Anthony Park is great -- and to that tony neighborhood of Falcon Heights just southeast.

If Hennepin County and Minneapolis ever get their act together and 4-to-3 CSAH 52 E Hennepin Ave, it'd feel a lot closer to Northeast, too..

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Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Anondson » October 20th, 2017, 4:34 pm

Pete Saunders writes on central city annexation of struggling inner ring suburbs, and suburb consolidation. First at Forbes, reposted to his blog.

http://cornersideyard.blogspot.com/2017 ... -help.html

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Multimodal » November 7th, 2017, 2:34 pm

Even Morningside, which looks much more like Minneapolis than Edina, merged with another suburb, Edina. Morningside shares a zip code and water supply with Mpls, but a school district with Edina. And it was originally splintered off from Edina, so there’s that.

It really depends on local circumstances, as to whether a microburb merges with another suburb or its local city. History, income, land values, politics… lots of variables.

I will say that it sounds like the state encouraged the merger—not sure if that meant any financial incentives or not (this is in 1966). As things get bad for these microburbs, the state and/or county may create incentives to merge.


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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby SurlyLHT » November 7th, 2017, 4:17 pm

Are there suburbs especially struggling in the Metro? I almost see suburbs merging with St Paul more than with Minneapolis given the cultural divides between Minneapolis and it's neighbors. I see Columbia Heights and the best cultural match, but it's in Anoka County. (NE MPLS and Columbia Heights are indistinguishable often.) Maybe Richfield? But then they could merge with Bloomington.

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Anondson » November 7th, 2017, 4:21 pm

With fiscal disparities tax base sharing, how bad could a city’s situation get?

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby tmart » November 7th, 2017, 5:06 pm

Yes, the US is truly federalist while most European countries are centralized. Even most provinces in Canada are more centralized, which has made it possible for provinces to pull off similar mergers, with mixed results. Toronto - success. Montréal - failure. And a mixed bag elsewhere.
I realize I'm replying to a post that's over a year old, but I think it's an important point. Montreal is often cited in these types of discussions, but it's not a good example because it involves very unusual incentives under the province's French language laws. Municipalities with more than 50 percent anglophones have protected status and additional rights to provide services in English, and these minority communities were diluted and dissolved under the merger. Additionally, even after the demerger, the regional governing structures retained more powers than they had over these communities prior to the merger. Of course some of the usual suspects applied as well, such as wealthy enclaves wanting to keep city resources to themselves, but I'd caution against drawing too many conclusions. I don't think the experience in Montreal's merger/demerger is broadly applicable to really anywhere else in the world.

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Multimodal » November 8th, 2017, 10:32 am

From what I understand, it started a decade or so after Morningside merged. So maybe Morningside would be around today if fiscal disparities tax base sharing existed?

Even so, who wants their taxes to go to support some tiny little village that doesn’t want to grow up? These microburbs might have made sense when they were created, but now that the cities & inner ring are all built out, and there’s a push for density by the Met Council, do they make sense anymore? Enough sense to be subsidized?

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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby The Heights » December 16th, 2017, 10:28 am

We could go big and unify Hennepin and Ramsey into a single county, and do unitary government a la Indianapolis where municipal governments are absorbed into the county. The question there is how the political weighting would work out... would there be enough urban interests to drive governance in said metropolis, or would there be too much suburban weight that would harm the transit, density etc. priorities of the core cities?

Since this is fantasy anyway, maybe some of the exurb parts of the counties more than a mile outside the 494/694 loop end up in Anoka, Carver and Dakota counties, while the new combined county absorbs the inner suburban edges of Anoka and Dakota (let's just ignore Washington county here...).

That would get the majority of the met council region population under one actual governmental unit, and probably 80% of the actual 'metro' type population (from eyeing up this https://streets.mn/2015/02/19/measuring ... h-the-map/), which might allow for much better actual regionalism than what we have today.

Paired as some kind of grand bargain with a federalism type structure between the state and the city allowing more urban self determination in return for continuing to subsidize the rest of the state with tax money, maybe it would be worth it. You could sell it on increased urban dynamism growing the economy and tax base enough to help fund more statewide items.

P.S. For MN pride/inferiority complex we'd then have the 5th largest US city by population! Comparable in density to Houston (a bit less than half as dense as Minneapolis, about 60% as dense as St. Paul).
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Re: Municipal Boundaries and Suburban Annexation

Postby Anondson » September 6th, 2018, 8:18 am

Article arguing to merge the failing inner ring suburbs of Chicago with Chicago.

http://www.chicagomag.com/city-life/Sep ... h-Chicago/


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