Hey! If you didn't catch today's City Council meeting live you might want to whip up an eight course dinner and watch it tonight on Channel 34. There weren't many of us left standing at the finish and I'm proud to say I was one of them. And I don't even get paid for that kind of misery. Four hours! Three and a half hours on 3 issues. Important ones for sure. Rochelle Olson from the Strib will never be able to do it justice. They prefer brevity. In this case I'll defer to them. Speaking of the media, I flipped on Nightline for five minutes last night out of pure boredom (thank god I don't own a TV) and I was shocked to hear him say to the guy he was interviewing, in a nice way, "that was a bullshit answer." My how TV has changed. What must Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson think? I guess I know the answer to that. Still speaking of media, It was great to see the Strib in the person of Eric Ringham weigh in on the issue of racial profiling. I was thinking just yesyerday as I was walking along the Nicollet Mall next to a handsome young black man, "I wonder if he has ever been profiled by police"? Then I thought to myself "what would happen if every Caucasian upon encountering a minority, especially an African-American, were to ask that person if they have ever been profiled?" Where might the conversation lead? I believe strongly we need to move this conversation beyond the police. Chief Olson at the 5th Precinct Codefor meeting once again became defensive at the idea that somehow the police are different in their attiudes from the rest of society. Probably not. That is no excuse to oppose mandatory data collection as some at the Capitol are suggesting we do. The essential difference between the police and the rest of society is that we empower them to funcion in a way that you and I do not. Given that status it is fair to hold them to a higher standard just as it is fair to hold our elected officials to a higher ethical standard given the trust we put in them to manage the public's business which can only be performed by government. I believe there are real liability issues for the city aside from basic human decency and I would suggest to taxpayers that they may want to think about that. Right now the city of Cincinatti is staring down the barrel of a gun. An attorney is going before the courts to get a number of profiling cases merged into a class action suit. It's not just ethics that are important. As I watch the City Council today I am most grateful for the input of Barret Lane and Paul Ostrow. I may not always agree with them but I appreciate the thinking process that looks forward to possible scenarios whereas all too often I've felt other members and units of government seem to operate on the "dodge 'em car" philosophy of government whereby one moves wherever one likes until they are hit by another vehicle or crash into a side wall and careen off in another direction. That goes a long way for me in explaining the plan of our city. We draw up things like Minneapolis 2010 and before the ground thaws in 2001 we've fudged so significantly as to make any further adherence by those used to following process seem like obstructionists, and worse yet fools for being so rigid and naive as to believe in the primacy of plans and committments. That is a lot of what the Council meeting today was about. I saw articulate people become so flabbergasted as to be speechless in the face of machinations to subvert the rules and process. I saw one member say "I am concerned with the good of the city" as though others were not motivated by the same concerns. Dore mead, for one, has nothing to lose and yet she is fighting hard for the good of the city. Lisa Goodman most likely won't be challenged. She's fighting for what she believes is in the best interest ofthe city. i may not go as far as her but in principle I agree. Now here I've gone and done what I said I would not. In for a dime, in for a dollar. Brian Herron chided the council for the mud he thought the council was dragging Ken White through when others have gone before him committing more egregious sins and there was little or no furor even when larger sums of money in severance pay were involved. It's like all of a sudden, in an election year(surprise,surprise) we get tough on money issues. Something I can not report on is what the council is discussing behind closed doors, namely lawsuits before them that the city is a party to. I sure hope they relent and accept the judgement of the judge in the case of Margot Segal et al. The judge really rapped the city on this. She believed the city ought to have had to pay interest on the settlement from the time it went for appeal. If you're not familiar with this it is the "ghost of LSGI", a sort of Kondirator minus $2 million. That's $6.5 million the city owes for this blunder. Eight years after LSGI was awarded $32 million this is still going on. Well I've gone in14 directions as usual. There's just so much to say and so few opportunities save this forum. Thanks Tim Connolly Ward 7 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Get email at your own domain with Yahoo! Mail. http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
