Silly Street Design
I'm very thankful to Steve Brandt for getting that story about the 8 lane
Lake St -- along with graphic got in the paper.
The comments in the story about 1st Av reminded me of a long standing
irritating fact of life living in South Minneapolis. 1st Av has these ugly
baracades designed to get rid of traffic in the residential area. This
reminds me of the baracades between Lake and 31 on Eliot and 10th -- which
are totally an example of NIMBY gone nutty. What these baracades do is
divert traffic that would be through traffic on 10th over to Chicago and
Portland. This also increases the bottleneck at Chicago and Lake. Yes,
the people who live on Elliot and 10th between 31 and Lake are very vocal
about this and want these streets blocked off from Lake. However there are
other people who live in the neighborhood who also need to drive through
the neighborhood. It's not fair for one or two blocks to divert traffic in
the way they do -- especially since the result of this is increasing
traffic in the unpleasant bottleneck of Chicago and Lake.
One of the pluses about Minneapolis is the grid structure, and numbered St
and alphabetical street design that helps to navigate the city.
Olson Contract Buyout:
At this point, I tend to agree with the sentiments expressed in the Strib
editorial on the subject on Friday and the op ed regarding finding a new
chief in yesterdays Strib.
I also like Mark Andersons points made on this list:
Olsen has gotten into most of his trouble, at least on this List, for the
massive police interventions, and perhaps mistakes in judgment (I don't
believe anyone can reasonably call the Somalian action thumping). My
biggest concern with Olsen is simply that he doesn't explain himself. When
each of these episodes come up, the police need to be right there in the
middle of the discussion, explaining why they did what they did. Instead,
we get a bunch of hotheads attacking the police force, and one can only
respond by guessing the intent of the police.
<snip>
Back to Olsen, he may also be partly responsible for the decline in crime
during the last several years. If we go looking for a Chief that is good
at community work, we may lose the management skills that help fight crime
and decrease thumping. Do we want to go back to Murderapolis and twice
yearly lawsuits? I don't know if Olsen was responsible for the
improvements, but it certainly is possible.
=========================================
EY: That is something to be concerned about. I also want to say I
appreciate the work that our CCP SAFE Team (Officer Chris Bishop, and Don
Greeley) do in our neighborhood. Since Officer Chris Bishop has become our
safe officer, he has come to many of our neighborhood meetings. I've seen
him at the Weed and Seed annual meeting, a few ACORN meetings, and some
Central Neighborhood Partnership meetings.
The CCP SAFE team has been an example of good city service, and active
proactive communication with the neighborhood. This contrasts with Bob
Miller or NRP and Bob Cooper of MCDA. The two Bobs have collectively
allowed CNIA to violate their contract with the city in order to avoid the
black eye for NRP in the legislature with having another neighborhood
organization go belly up. They hide behind beaurocratic rules and
regulations -- a "complaint" is not a "grievance" -- and therefore can be
ignored. The proper response to a "complaint" is, do you want to make this
a formal grievance, and then following up with the Neighborhood
Organization board to see if they have dealt with the grievance. That is a
customer service approach.
Eva
Eva Young
Central Neighborhood
Minneapolis
"You do not have the right to never be offended. This country is based on
freedom, and that means freedom for everyone - not just you! You may leave
the room, turn the channel, express a different opinion, etc., but the
world is full of idiots, and probably always will be." --Article II of the
Bill of Non-Rights.
_______________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A Civil City Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy
Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more:
http://e-democracy.org/mpls
