One of the great frustrations of these economically constrained times is that as cities reduce services and deliver less and less to residents, it fosters a sense of incompetence that diminishes the cities' ability to generate public support for the resources to do the job. Cases in point:

—From what nearby residents told me, those of us who attended the Minneapolis fireworks on the river last Friday left a lot of trash, mountains of it. I’m not clear on whether the Park Board or the city is responsible for trash collection after such an event (I suspect the city), but the riverfront was awash in garbage all weekend. Saturday waste collection of that magnitude would cost plenty of overtime.

—I decided to take the bus to the fireworks to avoid parking hassles, and on the way home, I showed up at the bus stop at Washington and Hennepin for the number 6 bus at approximately 11:15 p.m. There were a lot of angry revelers waiting—apparently the previous 6 had no-showed.

Because skeletal holiday schedules were in force, it had been an hour without a 6 when ours arrived, jammed to the gills before it even hit downtown. The next 6 was an hour later, so no one wanted to wait for a bus with a seat. But by the time we hit 6th and Hennepin, the bus was full, so the driver left dozens of people standing on the lonely streets of downtown and points south until the next bus at nearly 1 a.m. There was no explanation from the driver, no call to the operations center to ask for assistance. That’s all too common among the blasé transit force, many of whom can’t even answer basic rider questions about how to get from point A to B. (I say this as an everyday rider who utilizes a whole bucket of Metro Transit routes.)

More to the point, there should have been extra buses available. On special event days such as these, there’s an opportunity to make a great impression on one-time riders and get them out of their cars and into transit or at least increase transit’s support in a transit-ignorant community. I’m sure it would have been costly to provide the extra service on a holiday. I’m sure Metro Transit lacks the funds. So those revelers walked away cursing Metro Transit, and I don’t blame them, even though some of the anger is misplaced.

—I live near Lake of the Isles, which is nearing the end of nearly a decade of heavy construction for shoreline remediation. In the process, paths have been torn out and rebuilt, trees removed and replanted, and basic park infrastructure was unavailable for years. The end result was years of dust and decay and mud by the lake, devastating hardship to nearby businesses that live off summer recreational revenue, and a general sense of a lack of urgency from the Park Board.

Two years of work took nearly a decade because the legislature would not provide the funds for a timely effort. But also because my anal-retentive neighbors fought with the Park Board about issues, both genuine and picayune, and because the Board’s contracting and construction management operates at a pace that is probably three times a long as the private sector’s.

The process left me one of those people supporting an end to an independent Park Board in Minneapolis.

But in all these cases, I can’t separate what’s bureaucratic bumbling and indifference from a lack of resources to get the job done right and on time. I have this lingering suspicion that all of us who are cursing Metro Transit and the Park Board and the city of Minneapolis should be directing our ire at the legislature and Governor No.

Most folks aren’t willing to give government the benefit of the doubt these days. And when it begs for greater resources, people legitimately ask, “If you can’t pick up a mountain of garbage, provide reliable bus service to meet demand, and efficiently manage the city’s best natural asset, why should we trust you with even more of our dollars?”

As I write this, noise is booming into my office cubicle from the City of Minneapolis’s summer-long MOSAIC festival of cultural diversity. The city doesn’t run the buses or maintain the parks, and I’m not sure it wasn’t the Park Board’s job to collect the fireworks trash—I get that. But when urban government can’t get the basics right, you wonder how it can devote so much effort to frills?