There have been at least two e-mails to the list today in
which infrastructure is cited as a city requirement, but the
infrastructure mentioned is limited to streets,
sewers--bricks and mortar infrastructure. There is the
social infrastructure to consider as well because that makes
the city livable. Schools, libraries, parks and playing
fields, public social settings forthe variety of human needs
are also infrastructure.
What the NRP proved, if nothing else, is that
neighborhoods want the social infrastructure re-inforced,
upgraded, made more prominent, given care and regular
feeding. In fact, the 20-year plan (which morphed into the
NRP) was, in part, the product of some people who did
understand that the social infrastructure had been neglected
for quite a while. Joe Horan, who works at the NRP and who
may be second in command at this point was one of the blue
ribbon committee who understood that and made it part of the
NRP initiative. There were others, but I cannot remember
the names. (Aging can be such an annoying process.)
Dennie Schulstad, Lisa McDonald, and Steve Minn have often
been wincingly prominent defenders of the notion that only
the streets and sewers were important. McDonald and Minn
tried to cut the little amount in the budget dedicated to
assisting battered women, snidely calling it "the Mayor's
pet project." Schulstad argued long and repeatedly that
the only business of city government was to deliver streets,
sewers, cops. On the issues of children, SSB has brought
home the bacon, to some extent, by supporting Harriet Tubman
Shelter, Success by Six, and Weed & Seed. I give her credit
for her long-term committment.
I also give her enormous credit for her graciousness and her
respectful behavior, a thing sadly lacking in the operation
of city government. SSB had been treated very shabbily--and
in public, mind you--by a few of her colleagues during her
years on the city council and has in her years as mayor.
Yet, when occasions have arisen where she could have swayed
the outcome to cut her detractors out of the, shall we say,
"adulation" of the public, she did not. She can be a really
class act and I fully expect that quality in anyone who
wants to be mayor of Minneapolis. Those without it won't get
my vote.
Sorry to natter on so.
Wizard Marks, Central
