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Parks attorney promised alma mater would pay

Changing the tune on who pays the piper: In the video clip at left, Minneapolis Parks Attorney Brian Rice promises that DeLaSalle and not the Park Board will pay to replace regional parkland. Instead, Rice's deal with Met Council Chair Peter Bell (above) lets DeLaSalle off the hook, leaving the Minneapolis Park Board — and taxpayers — to pay the tab for land now valued at $2 million.Changing the tune on who pays the piper: In the video clip at left, Minneapolis Parks Attorney Brian Rice promises that DeLaSalle and not the Park Board will pay to replace regional parkland. Instead, Rice's deal with Met Council Chair Peter Bell (above) lets DeLaSalle off the hook, leaving the Minneapolis Park Board — and taxpayers — to pay the tab for land now valued at $2 million.

Minneapolis park commissioners agreed last year to allow DeLaSalle High School to build a stadium on regional parkland only after repeated assurances from Park Board Attorney Brian Rice that the park board and the public would not have to pay the cost of replacing the land. Rice promised commissioners over and over that the Reciprocal Use Agreement between DeLaSalle and the Park Board required DeLaSalle to cover any such expenses. "That's going to be a cost DeLaSalle's going to have to bear, not this board," Rice told the Minneapolis Park Board at its March 1, 2006 meeting. Relying on those statements, the park board voted that day to enter into a Reciprocal Use Agreement with DeLaSalle.

Fast forward to August 2007: Parks Attorney Rice, without any specific or formal authorization from the park board, offers up Minneapolis parkland to the Metropolitan Council in exchange for removing restrictions that prohibit DeLaSalle from building on regional open space parkland. The Met Council rejects that proposal as insufficient and scolds Minneapolis park staff for hiding crucial facts about the public land they wanted to trade. But still the Met Council agrees to let its chairman, Peter Bell, work out a new deal behind closed doors for land the Minneapolis park board already owns or would buy, at taxpayer expense.

Now that it's time to pay the Met Council piper, Rice and other Minneapolis park administrators have apparently decided to let taxpayers pay for removing regional parkland so a private, religious school can build a stadium on public property. And Attorney Rice, a DeLaSalle graduate, is suddenly silent about holding his alma mater to its contractual obligations.

Here is the actual language from the agreement between the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board (MPRB) and DeLaSalle that Attorney Rice was explaining in the video above:

The Reciprocal Use Agreement of March 1, 2006: This signed contract says not only that DeLaSalle is responsible for the costs of removing restrictions on the land, but that the developer must pay the attorney fees incurred in getting out of those restrictions. But who is paying for Attorney Rice's billable hours promoting the failed land swap proposal and negotiating a vague deal with the Met Council for the public to "sweeten the pot" so DeLaSalle's project may advance?The Reciprocal Use Agreement of March 1, 2006: This signed contract says not only that DeLaSalle is responsible for the costs of removing restrictions on the land, but that the developer must pay the attorney fees incurred in getting out of those restrictions. But who is paying for Attorney Rice's billable hours promoting the failed land swap proposal and negotiating a vague deal with the Met Council for the public to "sweeten the pot" so DeLaSalle's project may advance?


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