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NRP Director Running for Mayor

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Bob Miller, a familiar face to Minneapolis community activists, wants to be Mayor.

…Miller believes the neighborhoods and residents of Minneapolis are being ignored at the city government level and that the city’s finances need to be reexamined and more carefully managed.

Miller has been director of the NRP since 1992 and has been an outspoken critic of the city’s new direction with the program, which eliminates the current NRP body and replaces it with a department that answers to the city coordinator.

Miller is certainly a community organizer and a tireless advocate for neighborhood groups. I’m not sure that an unalloyed good. NRP under Miller accomplished great things, but devolved into support system for unaccountable petty tyrants. In my view, the City’s replacement for NRP only promises to subsitute one set of tyrants with another.

When I heard the news, my first reaction was, “Huh? Bob doesn’t live in Minneapolis!” From the StarTribune:

Miller was a longtime resident of southwest Minneapolis, but he bought a residence two blocks outside the city in Edina in 1999. He said he tried unsuccessfully to find a Minneapolis home that was accessible for his wife, who has multiple sclerosis. She said Tuesday that he has established residency at a house they own that is one block inside the city.

I heard this from Miller in his office a couple of years ago. It was quite a disappointment to learn this activist bigshot didn’t live in the City where he made his name. Worse for me, his reasoning—explained in more detail in his office—shows southside bias. He claimed he couldn’t find a house with the right layout in the city. Upper Northeast is full of them. I infer Bob wants to be near southwest amenities more than he is committed to living inside his own fiefdom.