Enclosed is the text of a letter I mailed to Delegates
prior to the endorsing convention for Ward 2. This got
rejected when sent as an attachment. Hopefully it's
okay this way. Please publish it on the forum.
Thanks!
Paul Zerby for Minneapolis City Council
(612) 379-8095, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
March 12, 2001
Dear Fellow DFLer:
Because I believe it is time for new leadership on the
Minneapolis City Council, I write to ask your help in
seeking DFL endorsement for the Council seat for Ward
2 currently held by Joan Campbell.
There are huge issues confronting us:
Affordable Housing/Development Practices
There is a need for affordable housing in Minneapolis
that is approaching crisis proportions, affecting not
only persons who are homeless or low-income, but the
middle class, from students seeking low-cost
apartments to young families seeking first homes, to
seniors struggling to stay in the homes they have
lived in for years. When a majority of the homeless
persons in the city are employed, but unable to find
housing they can afford, something must be done.
The City Council through the practice of demolishing
substandard low-cost housing, but failing to replace
adequately, and focusing instead on subsidizing
downtown development has shortchanged its citizens.
Writing in the March 6, 2001 Star Tribune, business
writer Neal St. Anthony said:
�Minneapolis, through its aggressive and
controversial development practices, is pushing up
public indebtedness to subsidize development of
downtown Target stores and entertainment complexes
into which tens of millions of dollars are being
poured to buy or force out existing owners and prepare
the land for development by city-favored developers.
***
�Because of the huge public debt the projects create,
it takes years for such developments to generate taxes
for schools, cops and parks while the debt is being
repaid by the incremental taxes.***
It�s time to put the brakes on tax increment financing
and big corporate subsidies and concentrate on
developing affordable housing for those who would
become or stay residents of our city and neighborhoods
Police Practices
It�s been some years since we struggled to get out
from under the New York Times labeling our city as
�Murderapolis� and crime appears to be down here, as
elsewhere, and for this thanks are due our police
force. Yet there are new and widespread concerns, of
a different nature, about policing in our city that
need to be addressed forthrightly.
There continue to be concerns about the existence of
�racial profiling� by the police. The CODEFOR
(�Computer Optimized Deployment Focus on Results�)
Program needs to be reevaluated. According to the
Hennepin County African American Men�s Project in 1999
over 50% of African American males between ages 18 and
30 living in Hennepin County were arrested and booked.
In two recent instances the police have fatally shot
unarmed persons who were mentally ill. One of the
victims was black. As a recent editorial in the
Minnesota Daily put it, �the struggle against racial
profiling, police brutality and fair treatment to
disabled people deserves as much community support as
possible.�
Peaceful protests at the recent International Society
of Animal Genetics Conference in Minneapolis bore no
reasonable resemblance to the protests at the World
Trade Organization meeting in Seattle, yet they were
met with massive infiltration and repressive police
measures all out of proportion to any threat to the
public, at a cost of over a million dollars to the
taxpayers, because, according to Chief Olson, he
didn�t intend to lose his job.
It�s time to intensify police training in nonviolent
ways to deal with conflict. If a gunman shooting at
the White House can be disabled by a shot in the knee,
surely an unarmed person suffering from mental illness
or chemical dependency can be dealt with short of
being shot to death.
It may also be time to increase the authority of the
Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority, which is
currently appointed by the mayor and city council, is
without subpoena power, doesn�t use independent
hearing officers, and is without power to discipline
officers.
Children
Our children are our future. They can use all of the
help that our city, in cooperation with other
agencies, can give them.
Our teachers do a valiant job to provide quality
education to a diverse and often challenging student
population. The superintendent and school board have
identified a high correlation between simple
attendance at school and academic success. Hennepin
County is working hard to assist in securing
attendance; the city can do no less. Beyond
attendance, students sometimes confront teachers with
disruptive, even violent behavior making learning
difficult for everyone; the teachers and schools need
our full support in dealing with these situations.
Minnesota, and Minneapolis, has a dismal record of
delivering health care to children, particularly
children of color. The Minnesota Department of
Health, partnering with the private health care
delivery system, has announced its intention to
address this issue. We need to be of whatever help we
can in this effort.
The DFL Education Foundation is looking at early
childhood development studies that show �the life
trajectory of a child is substantially influenced by
her experiences before she hits the kindergarten
door.� Check out �Why Early Childhood Intervention is
a Key Investment for State and Local Policymakers� on
the DFL Education Foundation website at
http://www.uses.qwest.net/~dfl-ed/index/html. By
partnering with other levels of government the City
could lead the way in multidisciplinary
intergenerational and individualized support services
such as family support social services, pediatric care
and referral, early childhood education, supplemental
meals and snacks, and developmentally appropriate
activities.
Environmental Concerns
Our city continues to be plagued with the residue of
years of environmental neglect, from unclean brown
fields, to toxic waste, to child-threatening lead
paint. We have to help deal with these problems,
which often outstrip the ability of individuals and
neighborhoods to handle. In allowing the Kondirator
and the University of Minnesota coal-burning steam
plant we desecrate the Mississippi River bank. The
city itself may be able to be part of the solution
instead of the problem by looking into creative ideas
such as �hybrid� electric and gasoline powered
vehicles as city cars are replaced.
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota is perhaps the biggest
�neighborhood� in the Southeast Minneapolis community,
with thousands of students living on and near campus
and employing many of us who live Southeast; yet it is
often an uneasy relationship between the University
and the surrounding neighborhoods.
Parking in the nearby neighborhoods seems to be a
never-ending and increasing problem. Students
continue to complain of being victimized by
�slumlords� and have difficulty finding any livable
housing off campus. Longtime residents complain of
being disturbed by noisy, �party houses.� There is a
need for mediation between landlords and renters and
to remember renters not infrequently grow into
homeowners. The University should take more
responsibility for its students living off campus.
Substandard individual housing units are sometimes
literally a blight on the neighborhood and end up
being torn down; large new student housing complexes
sometimes seem poorly planned and integrated with the
surrounding environs, and are too expensive for many
students. There is a need for close and continued
communication between the University and its neighbors
on these issues.
LRT
Light rail transit is coming down Hiawatha; it may or
may not be coming between Minneapolis and St. Paul
down a �Central Corridor.� Some see it as providing
much of the solution to the University and its
neighbors parking problems; others see it as tearing
apart neighborhoods like an intervening freeway. At
any rate, funding for a central corridor does not
appear likely in the immediate future, with Northstar
Commuter Line and Riverview Corridor having more
immediate priority in the legislature.
Apart from what LRT may do for or to us, the city
should work with the Metropolitan Council to
strengthen the bus services in our neighborhoods to
provide more timely, cleaner, efficient, and safe
service.
Snowplowing
A winter like this past winter is made even more
difficult when it takes Minneapolis a day longer than
St. Paul to get the streets plowed. It would not take
a great deal more money to also plow out the
driveways, sidewalks and bus stops that the first
plowing barricades. More help for the elderly and
others in keeping sidewalks cleared and sanded only
makes sense. Broken bones in older people can be slow
to heal and a serious matter. The streets plainly
need to be kept open so that fire engines, ambulances,
and school buses, can safely negotiate them. The
outrageous costs of towing and storing �snowbirds,� as
well as the tickets and inconvenience to city
residents make it imperative that changes be made in
the plowing regulations in our city. Simply put, if
it is necessary to reallocate funds to get the job
done, let�s do it.
Joan Campbell, the incumbent Democratic Councilperson,
was quoted in the Southeast Angle and Seward Profile
as reluctant to leave the City Council because she
doesn�t want to �quit at halftime.� I believe it is
time for her to turn the ball over to new leadership.
If you have any questions or comments, call me at
(612) 379-8095, or e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Prepared and paid for by Zerby for Council Campaign
Committee, 97 Orlin Avenue SE, Minneapolis MN 55414
=====
Paul Zerby
97 Orlin Ave SE
Minneapolis, MN 55414
612-379-8095
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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