Hawthorne Neighborhood pays $428.76 to pick up 25 phone books! $13,720 to follow?

I checked my email this morning and found I had an email from the Jordan Hawkman. It was pretty extensive and obvious a fair amount of time went into the research that he had done. Jeff Skrenes is at it again on the JNS blog yesterday where he wrote about his adventures of collecting phone books from vacant houses and taking them ALL THE WAY BACK to Dex's offices! Rather than attempt to steal Jordan Hawkman's thunder, I will let his words tell you about how Jeff Skrenes wastes neighborhood money.

JNS Blog: Phone Books Returned to Dex

"Hawthorne Neighborhood pays $428.76 to pick up 25 phone books! $13,720 to follow?


We were doing a little figuring to see how much it costs residents to recycle phone books in Hawthorne. First we looked at the Hawthorne Web site to review their budget. We found that the $291,352 Hawthorne Community Council’s budget (1) included $106,500 in expenses unrelated to staff. There were some categories in the 5500 category that could may be considered unrelated to staff, however we included them because much of the information included in them involves fundraising to pay for expenses of the staff. The criteria for determining if the category is related to staff or not was simply this “If there was not staff, then would thin expense be there?” When the answer was yes, we added the figure to our total.

One must remember that a salary does not simply reveal the cost of employee. The cost of having 3 staff for the Hawthorne Community Council is $183,852 or $61,284 each. Let’s just say for arguments sake the costs are divided equally 3 ways between staff costs to the community

For the year of 2010 there are 261 weekdays, of which 6 holidays are included that (we included 1 day for Christmas 2010 as eve/day falls on Fri/Sat). We also assumed that the staff gets two weeks of total comp. time. This adjustment reduces the actual working days to 245 for the 2010 year. With an average of 7 hours per day (after extracting two fifteen minute breaks and a 30 minute lunch per day), we come up with come up with a total of 1715 working hours in the year of 2010.

$61,284 divided by 1715 (actual working hours total) = $35.73/hr

So what did the residents of Hawthorne receive for their $35.73/hr on June 2nd 2010?

Jeff Skrenes, staff member of the Hawthorne Community Council mentioned that he strolled around the neighborhood (2) collecting 25 phone books from properties. Let’s say Mr. Skrenes is very efficient and hunts down 1 phone book every 7 minutes while running up the steps, depositing his treasure in the trunk, buckling up and scouting for the next phone book to be discovered. This would equate to 175 minutes or around 3 hours. Then Mr. Skrenes drive out to the suburbs to return the phone books to the receptionist. We estimate this process would likely take at least 2 hours round trip. Then Mr. Skrenes time for blogging in his private blog he writes two entries related to the phone books totaling just fewer than 2700 words plus comments.

Let’s estimate that Skrenes is a phenomenal typist and thinks, writes, and proofs at the rate of 19 words per minute for composition (3). This would equal 142.11 minutes. There is also time that must be allotted for multiple pictures taken, posted and dropped into the posts along with the multiple links to you tube sites (one typical example is Ernie from Sesame Street singing “connecting the dots”). This time easily triples bringing the blogging time to just over 7 hours.

This brings us to our grand total of 12 hours @ 35.73/hr = $428.76 or $17.15 for each phone book collected. Hey I have an idea, perhaps I should simply do what the City of Minneapolis Web site (4) suggests. Put them in my recycling bin. That is free and does not cost anything. Mr. Skrenes suggests that there are an additional 800 phone books left for him to collect on his list. The estimate for him to collect this balance of phone books at this rate would be $13,720 for just the Dex phone books. Just think about the possibilities of collecting Yellow books, neighborhood coupon flyers and other items.

…..Or, we could just put them in the recycling bins for free. Better yet, since there is a $6,000.00 fee for vacant Building registration in the City of Minneapolis. One could request that the department of inspection simply take 5 minutes to print off a copy or email the list of vacant properties to the vendors such as Dex, Yellow Book and others upon request.

Total cost, 5 minutes and a few stamps. Oh yeah, this would service all 80 plus neighborhoods and not just Hawthorne.

I am not a paid neighborhood housing director paid to come up with these streamlining ideas to fit both the needs of the neighborhood as well as the pocketbook. Upon second thought, it appears that a common sense idea like this would likely make too much sense for Hawthorne and its current Housing Director Jeff Skrenes."

Great work Jordan!

-Anti-Johnny

Jeff Skrenes Overlooks Non-Authorized Work Done at HIS House

Note the new steps in front of the door and the oven off to the side

Photo contributed by a Hawthorne Resident

This is a copy of an email that was sent to me yesterday with regard to the property that the Hawthorne Hawkman aka Jeff Skrenes, Hawthorne neighborhood housing director lives at. I have just copied it directly from my email. Pics are also shown of the house.

"I called 311 to report unpermitted work being done at his property. ( because when I drove by there was all sorts boards and cutting going on by this guy outside with saw dust flying everywhere (wonder if that is eco friendly). The stove was siting outside. Meaning that you have to pull a permit for simply connecting a gas line as well as any remodel work. The reference number is 351539 for this one.
I mentioned the grass and someone else already called in to complain yesterday on the 19th. Ref # 351172."

Rejected Jordan Hawkman Comments from JohnnyNorthside Blog

I just got an email that had the following comments attached. The author had submitted them to Johnny Northside's blog but, they anticipated that they would be rejected. Seems they were correct about that. No worries though! The Anti-Johnny is happy to post them on the Anti-Johnny blog!
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"Jordan Hawkman said...
Interesting how you pick and choose whether to post what I write. It is an obvious sign of weakness. If you notice, I have taken on all challengers of the article and properly backed up any and all the points with facts. In fact, there have been several great points that have come to light yet people have bashed the ADA on your side of the fence only to give a half hearted "oops" after the fact.

The posts are posted on the below blog anyway
http://misadventuresofjohnnynorthside.blogspot.com/
Your inexperience in commercial real estate really shows Skrenes. The property does not have a license to lease and thus cannot collect any rent. Cite an example of a non-compliant rental contract to back up your information.

At least you threw Hawthorne's house under the bus too for being not properly zoned. Some housing director you are....but then again, you have done some sort of research on non compliant rental rates. Funny how your little mind grinds away to come up with something to save face. I have news for you, The banking world does not give value to a business loan that cannot collect rent. Franklin Bank's regulators are going to take notice of this by it becoming public. That is one of the points of the article.

That is the problem with you JNS bullies, you are knee deep in crap yourselves yet you target those that don't deserve it. Your gang is one of the worst things in North Minneapolis. You contribute nothing while tearing anything and everything apart you guys get your greedy hands upon.

If the questions/truths raised are irking your inner circles that much, just wait until tomorrow. The truth is just killing you guys and your lies will be your demise. Good luck JNS gang members, you will need it.

The whole point of this is not to sink JACC or Hawthorne but to show that casting stones in a very thin glass house is not advised. Judging from what information has been secured recently, a thin glass house would be an over statement"

Pressing Question for the Hawthorne Hawkman AKA Jeff Skrenes

The following was sent to me by one of my "Reliable Sources" (as Johnny always says). I am posting it as it was given to me.

"Jeff Skrenes, housing director of Hawthorne, answer the question I put out there to you regarding what you think the legal rental rate for the nonconforming property JACC leases should be.

A vacant commercial property is worth nothing in the Commercial loan world. Securing a mortgage, with commercial debt service, on on investment property that is not allowed to generate revenue is a very suspicious transaction. What exactly are you for and against here. It only appears you have an ax to grind with old board members and trashing them. Who cares about any of the old JACC Members we are talking about here and now.

Answer the question because you credibility is at stake. By the way, you sure have alot of time to blog for Jordan while you are supposed to be serving as housing director for Hawthorne.

This unedited Blog post will be posted on www.Mplsmirror.com and/or http://misadventuresofjohnnynorthside.blogspot.com/ if not posted by 1pm today. Other posts have been omitted and it is unfortunate that jns has to be backed into posting.

I will be expecting your lawful rent number shortly...heck give a range...something to back up your inexperienced comments regarding nonconforming rental rates in the area."

Question for the Hawthorne Hawkman

Note: The end of this post has been updated. An anonymous commenter on the JNS blog asked Jeff if he had seen this post. Jeff responded on that site rather than here so, I have copied his reply and pasted it here. To avoid any complaints, I am disclosing that he did not post his reply on this site. -Anti Johnny

On the JNS blog, Jeff Skrenes a.k.a. the Hawthorne Hawkman made it a point to highlight the applause that was given in response to the principal owners of TJ Waconia being in prison (even though the story is well past yesterday's news).

So the Mis-Adventures of Johnny Northside is reaching out to Jeff personally to answer the following (or at least offer an opinion).

The city council did such an amazing job of taking a stand against fraud as it has been reported in the case of TJ Waconia. The city filed a civil suit that was announced by Mayor Rybak and a few No-Mi neighborhoods joined that lawsuit as well (Hawthorne was not among them).
1) Can you comment on why the Hawthorne neighborhood did not join in that suit?
2) Can you offer an opinion on how the buyout the city agreed to with SunTrust Mortgage has had an impact on No-Mi?
Note: As part of the settlement between the city and SunTrust, the city bought a slew of properties from SunTrust's REO department that were previously owned by TJ Waconia for a mere 10 to 12% discount. The suit was dismissed soon after. TJ Waconia was not the focus of the suit soon after it was filed because, SunTrust Mortgage was not notified of the law suit prior to it being filed and announced. The significance of that was that SunTrust was actually the legal owners of most of the properties included in the suit as TJ Waconia had already lost them to foreclosure. SunTrust countered the law suit and the city ended up buying many of the houses from SunTrust because of it. It is undetermined how much money the city wasted by pursuing the civil suit and having to buy houses when a simple title search would have disclosed that SunTrust owned the houses and did not need to be put under city control as was reported.
Here is the link to the dismissed case. http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=1611672898 And here is the link to the related case that was also dismissed: http://pa.courts.state.mn.us/CaseDetail.aspx?CaseID=1611685450

It would be interesting to hear the housing director's take on this as he can see first hand at what impact the neighborhoods have had as a result of the city controlling so many houses (as a result of having to over pay for them, costing the taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more).
I hope Jeff will respond as this blog does not pick and choose which comments to allow. His comments are not only allowed but, welcomed.
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The Hawthorne Hawkman said... @ anon 1:34 - I read that post now, thanks. I will not respond on that particular site because it is entirely dedicated to smearing the name of a good friend and neighborhood advocate. The article posed two questions to me: why wasn't Hawthorne involved in the TJ Waconia suit, and then a second, very technical question.
Hawthorne was not involved in the TJ Waconia lawsuit because there were only a small handful of TJ Waconia properties in the Hawthorne neighborhood. That doesn't mean we weren't affected at all by Helgason's and Balko's fraud; only that the staff and volunteer resources that would have been used up if we'd been a plaintiff would not have brought the neighborhood a large enough return on that investment of time and energy. Plus, as demonstrated by the convictions, the city and the neighborhoods primarily affected clearly didn't need our help on this one.

As for the second question, since I was not involved directly, I will not venture into that territory. Mr. Watkins can ask any of the plaintiffs about that directly if he so chooses, or someone can post an answer here or on another blog.
January 25, 2010 8:57 AM
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(Anti-Johnny's follow up)
Jeff: First, let me thank you for answering (even though it was not directly on here.
Second, I would be thrilled to ask the 2nd question I posted directly to some of the Plaintiffs as you suggested (I have asked a handful already but, there has been no reply). Which site or forum would be the most appropriate place to ask the question? On a side note, I am wanting to know the answer to that question as it does go way beyond TJ Waconia and the mis-handling of that case. The fact that you did give a response to the question leads me to believe that you agree (at least somewhat) that the events that took place in that case, could very well have a significant effect with the neighborhoods and residents of No-Mi.

--Anti Johnny