Scouring the minds of St. James residents. What should cities do?

In the southern Minnesota town of St. James, city officials have:

--Ended overtime pay for city workers and frozen wage rates.

--Cut a mechanic's job.

--Eliminated a job in the street department.

--Reduced summer hires from three to zero.

--Turned off half the streetlights.

--Canceled National Night Out gatherings.

--Raised the deductible on employee medical insurance from $300 to $3,000.

--Transferred money from the town's airport into the general fund.

--Started charging people money when the police unlock their cars.

--Held residents' property tax burden steady.

Mayor Gary Sturm rattles off the list rapid fire as he heads out the door to show a home for a Mayberry Realty customer.

"We've done everything we can without shortening the 40-hour work week or cutting the police department."

So now what? St. James, a city of 4,600 and the seat of Watonwon County, gets a little over half its $2.9 million general fund budget from the state of Minnesota. That's a higher proportion than many, so when the state cuts local government aid to cities and contemplates cutting some more, a place like St. James winds up with a front row seat for the conversation over how residents of a city redefine what they want and how to pay for it.

"I'm holding my breath to see what the state does," says city administrator Joe McCabe.

Which is why the town provides a good kickoff this week for a series of hard conversations the League of Minnesota Cities is holding in 10 cities this spring and summer.

Today and Wednesday, the league is talking with small groups of business people, senior citizens, Latinos and others in St. James to get a deeper understanding of what people want from their cities, how those services should be delivered and, of course, how to pay for them. The league is looking for new thoughts, intentionally asking city officials like Sturm and McCabe to stay away and encouraging "opinions, insights and ideas" from more than the normal leaders, said Mary-Margaret Zindren, who is organizing the effort for the league.

While St. James might discover some things about itself and what its residents want this week, the main goal for the league is to come up with a statewide sense that can inform residents all over Minnesota.

"What people in St. James say may be very different from what people in Moorhead say," Zindren said.

It will be interesting to see whether people come up with new ways to save money in St. James. And McCabe is hoping the conversations are a chance to educate residents of about what the city does. But it may be most important to see whether the conversation starts to evolve into an acceptance of a "new normal," in which the definition of what a city is and what people want to do for themselves collectively starts to change.

Chuck Marohn is too relentlessly critical of the status quo for some people but in this post Monday he makes a plea worth reading for new approaches and innovation.

For a good backgrounder on the situation Minnesota cities face, see our Ground Level "Cities in Crisis" topic page.

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