In a recent Star Tribune Letter to the Editor, a Lakeville resident is up in arms over the purchase of Plasma TVs for sex offenders something which was corrected by the governor. Strangely enough, I find his comments lacking conviction as he has a much larger problem with the same sort of high-end TVs in his own backyard:
Theft by tax
After reading and hearing about the purchase of the highest of high-end televisions for the Moose Lake Sex Offender Program I am furious. Why is nobody calling this what it is? It is theft pure and simple. The purchase of those televisions was theft from the taxpayers via inappropriate expenditure. This is another example of how government agencies treat our tax dollars. They do not equate “government money” with being the hard-earned money of taxpayers. This is outrageous and proof that government agency funding needs to be slashed as a way of eliminating waste.
JOHN REINAN
LAKEVILLE
So John, I wonder if you realize that at the brand spanking new Lakeville police station off of Dodd (near Lifetime Fitness) there are numerous “high-end televisions” on 24/7 for absolutely no one? I mean, seriously, how many people sit in the lobby of that police station and want to look at whatever bullshit they have blaring while they wait to bail their drunken/abusive significant others out of jail?
Maybe, if you were so concerned about the wasteful spending (which was immediately corrected in the case of the sex offender treatment center instead of remaining on the walls above the Lakeville PD’s spacious lobby), you would be up in arms that Lakeville allowed the purchase of TVs for the police station at all as well as the fact that high-end televisions can cost taxpayers anywhere from $20 to $185 a year in average usage costs–nevermind when they’re run 24/7. In a city which has had to cut staff to bring their budget in line you would think that the city council as well as fiscally conservative residents would be looking for every single opportunity to cut cost. Honestly John, you should be at every fucking Lakeville City Council meeting demanding to know why they’re wasting your tax dollars instead of bitching to the Star Tribune about something that’s already been corrected.
John, local action is a lot easier to correct than state or federal. Get involved and fix the real and on-going issues in your own neighborhood instead of wasting your (and our) time and energy on something that’s moot.
What do you think about this letter to the editor? Was it really something that a Lakeville resident should have spent the time writing up when it was already corrected? Should more Lakeville residents be concerned with the fact that their police station is outfitted with expensive TVs that no one watches or should people just ignore the high up-front and long-term costs as something that’s acceptable. Whatever you think about John’s Letter to the Editor go ahead and comment on as I’d love to hear what you have to say!
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November 4th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Come on, stop whining about a few thousand dollars spent on some TVs in Lakeville. When you have a tax dollar theft measured in Millions that was not voted on by the people, that surpasses the theft of $23 Million in tax payers dollars that was spent on the Burnsville Performing Arts Center and Parking Structure then you can whine. This theft of $23M of our hard earned tax dollars is magnitudes worse than a few high end televisions. Hell, I bet there are more high end televisions in the PAC than in the Lakeville Police Department, and those new TVs in the Moose Lake facility combined!! You think you have theft in Lakeville and Moose Lake, come to Burnsville where we have tax dollar theft measured in the tens of millions by Mayor Kautz and Dan Gustafson.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:41 am
TL, I don’t think that John cares about Burnsville so I made sure to give him something he could relate better to.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
Local, State or Federal — I’m rarely going to complain when someone publicizes an excellent example of how our government wastes our money. Keep piling them on and eventually people might wise up.
I don’t believe it was “corrected”. Correcting this, in my mind, would have been for the TVs to be returned. We still ended up paying for 40 TVs to the tune of $1,500 plus $700 mounting brackets each that were not essential/needed.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:08 pm
I have no problem with Mr. Reinan writing to the editor. That topic was beaten into the ground a bit by the media, but at least the guy is thinking about public spending and saying something about it. That’s a lot more than most people do, so I don’t think we should rip him for speaking his mind.
As for the police station TVs, are they really “high end” or are they just flat panel TVs? How many are there? Do we know how expensive these things really were? I would need to know more of the facts before I got all hyped up about them. I think people still get all worked up about “flat panel” TVs because they still consider them new and expensive. Some definitely are, but many are no more expensive than the old CRT style TVs were.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
John,
1. The Lakeville police station was built several years ago.
2. They are large LCD TVs. Those are still far more expensive than your run of the mill 27/32″ CRT TV (which ran in the $300 range).
3. They are still turned on and being viewed only by those that are passing by in their cars.
4. You’re right, we need more information.
November 5th, 2009 at 12:53 am
The relevant issue brought to light by the TV scandal is not the Lakeville cop shop or the Burnsville PAC — those are issues unto themselves that don’t require ad hominem comparisons — but the cost of indefinite civil commitments of sex offenders.
Dems blame Pawlenty for lax oversight; Pawlenty blames some bureaucrat for bad purchases and redirects the TVs to vet homes (how politically cool is THAT?)
Meanwhile, costs of post-penal sex offender commitments mount, and will continue to, and maybe even more of those expensive beds will be needed. Easy answers? This is all about Dru, of course, and our COLLECTIVE state response to it. So, no, there aren’t easy answers. But that never stopped the politicos from having a pissing match.
Excellent opinion piece in last Sunday’s Trib by D.J. Tice. Sorry, I don’t have a link. Sorry also for using the word “penal.”
November 5th, 2009 at 8:52 am
If Moose Lake is a “treatment facility”, and these people are”patients”, I have no problem spending the money on TVs for common areas. If it is a “detention center” and these people are “inmates”, then I do. No one has adequetly explained what Moose Lake is supposed to do, other than to “warehouse sex offenders indefinately after the completion of their prison sentances”.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:34 am
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November 5th, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I more question the station itself and the potentially poor planning that caused the city to abandon the old station. I think the old one was built in the 90′s? That’s still almost new in my opinion. Then they realized that they could no longer expand it the way they wanted to so now we have the new multi million dollar station and the not so old one sitting near downtown doing nothing. We’re debating a couple tvs when the real issue is probably the MILLIONS that might have been saved if they had more foresight in planning for growth with the old station.
November 5th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
John,
I don’t think that they aren’t using the old station. I would assume that this new station is to help decrease response times for those new flashy neighborhoods (and higher tax revenue generators) that are going up along Dodd.
November 5th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks Bill. I could be wrong, but I think they moved everything from the old station to the new one. I don’t think the old one is being used anymore, and in fact I’m pretty sure they took the police station sign down on the old location. The link below is a nice little video from back when they were selling the project to residents. Right around the 6:45 mark they interview a person that admits that they had no long term planning when they expanded the old station in 94 and again in 99. It’s rediculous to me that something built in 1999 is now totally useless.
The new station is only about a year old, so trust me the cost of those tvs is nothing compared to the cost of their lack of long term planning in the 90s.
http://www.ci.lakeville.mn.us/departments/cableshow_lpdspecial.htm
November 20th, 2009 at 11:33 am
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