On Monday, the Lessard Council officially offered its blessing for the the first $20 million allocation of the Upper Mississippi Forest Project, an initiative to buy a permanent easement on vast tracts of forest lands and wetlands mostly in Itasca County. I wrote a post about the topic a couple weeks ago. The idea is that the first $20 million would be approved this year with the other $20 million on the table for the next funding cycle.
The Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council is the advisory board tasked with prioritizing the spending of the sales tax revenue for the preservation of the outdoors and the arts. This group formed after voters approved a constitutional amendment authorizing the dedicated funding last fall. (Remember “Sportsmen Vote Yes?” That was this).
This is by no means the last step. The legislature must approve the Lessard Council’s recommendations and there is a good deal of consternation on the part of metro legislators that more metro projects weren’t recommended. This is politics, so I get the idea that pools of money must be fought over like scraps of meat. But I’d gently suggest that if you want to preserve the outdoors you should do so in places where “the outdoors” still exist. I guess we could buy a few thousand salt licks to leave around the north end of White Bear Lake, but I don’t know that it would constitute a better long term plan for the state’s great outdoors.
One angry commenter on the Star Tribune website essentially said that this project amounts to a $40 million swamp that Minnesotans shouldn’t care about. Not only is that inaccurate, but preserving this land guarantees hunting, hiking, recreational vehicle and snowmobiling opportunities for generations of all Minnesotans, including those who wish to occasionally flee their metropolitan environs. Not buying the easement will segment and sometimes destroy the forests for the benefit of a few wealthy landowners. It’s too bad, politically, that these forest lands are all in one county. But no county has more lakes or forests for its size than Itasca. Preserving places like this are part of the intent of the original law.
If metro legislators were wise they’d realize they’d have a much better shot at gobbling up the arts funding that’s also part of the sales tax approved last fall. (WINK WINK!)
Considering how many of my fellow metro-dwellers leave on the weekends to head “up north”, I find the notion that the metro should receive a big chunk of the outdoors money to be a big fat joke. I live near the Carlos Avery W.P. in the northern exurbs, and I spend 20% of my year in Ely. Where I live is lovely, but how many state residents benefit from preservation efforts near my home? Not many. Now, how many state residents benefit from conservation efforts in the Arrowhead? Case closed.
What really disappoints me (about the fighting over the outdoors funding) is that it further exacerbates the “metro vs. outstate” divide.
I had the same thoughts regarding the arts funding… However, I think that cities like Duluth, St. Cloud, and Bemidji deserve a piece of that pie as well.
Oh, I agree, Olive. As an arts backer on the Iron Range I’d love to see some of the arts funding help projects up here. Some of them will deserve it. But the state’s outdoors and arts infrastructure are not spread equally around the state, so it’s logical to say that the funding from this special account wouldn’t be distributed equally either. On that I think we’re on the same page.