-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday 13 October 2002 22:09, dyna wrote:
> All this set Stephanie back less than $100,000- what will that > kind of money buy in Minneapolis' overheated housing market? It may not buy much of a house, but it will buy you an easy/fast commute to one of several hundred thousand jobs. It will get you nearly instant access to a large number of high quality libraries, museums and art galleries. It will save you 4 hours driving should you want to watch a Gopher, Viking, Twins, T'Wolves, or Wild game. It puts you next to the Mississippi, which has miles of great parks along it. It puts you in easy reach of hundreds of restaurants (much better selection than choosing between Torgy's and the A&W in Glenwood). In Minneapolis, I can shop at Rainbow if I want, but I can also buy all my favorite weird foods at the Wedge or Whole Foods (which I suppose is actually in SLP) or a wide variety of ethnic groceries... even Kowalski's has a pretty good selection. I can go to night clubs easily, take a huge variety of classes at the many local educational institutions. Now, if you can tell me that Glenwood has libraries that even come close to touching Minneapolis Central (even the slapped together interim location with its lack of stacks)... if you can point out to me where in Glenwood I might get a bite of Ethiopian food for dinner... if you can tell me where I'll be able to buy a decent variety of cheeses and wines... if you can introduce me to an employer who can offer me a job as interesting as the one I've got that won't require a 50% cut in pay... > Pulling into my driveway I was greeted by a couple junkies > trying to subtly park their late model car in front of my house. That > clinched it- I, like many folks, I will be retiring within a few > years. We're not stuck in Minneapolis- we can spend our pension > checks anywhere. Hmmm. Looks like hard work and careful saving can pay off. Retiring to Glenwood sounds grand, it's not a bad place... but I've been here and there, and there is no here. > Most of our city fathers and mothers don't have to rub shoulders with > armed drug dealers while transferring buses at Franklin and Chicago > or Broadway and Lyndale. As long as the tax base exists to fund their > city government and positions, they pretty much don't care. Well, considering the potential deficits on the horizon, I'd say the tax base no longer exists. The citizens certainly get it, and voted in some new management. Crime is a hard one to solve. We can't realistically compare Minneapolis to Glenwood in that regard. What we can do is compare Minneapolis to other similar cities. We can start with St. Paul. We can then look at places like Cleveland, Detroit, Portland, Seattle, Kansas City, St. Louis, Dallas/Ft. Worth, [list cut short]. How are we doing to other places with similar population bases? Are you telling me that none of those cities have their own Jordan neighborhoods? > I think we need to send a message to Minneapolis city > government where it hurts- in their property tax receipts. Unless > Minneapolis finally performs their duty to provide all neighborhoods > equal protection under the law, we need to make our housing and > business investments elsewhere. OK. But I think you're letting your experience in one small part of Minneapolis cloud your judgement. Certainly what you've described is horrible conditions. But it's not nearly so bad even a few miles away from there where I live. Your $100K would buy you a decent house in my neighborhood, and I've never knowingly witnessed any of what you describe as a daily ordeal in your neighborhood. My neighbor just had her car broken into, but that's one such experience in the four years I've been here. My biggest problem used to be kids playing football in my front yard. I put in a garden to prevent that and now I have some grass out there where it's supposed to be. What Minneapolis needs is an (un)official red light district, but that hasn't been tried. Ongoing efforts to turn downtown into a suburbanite-friendly shopping mall preclude it. So where else to sell drugs and sex? In neighborhoods... and we all know which neighborhoods that means. That you are stuck in one is unfortunate, but most of Minneapolis isn't like that. While I certainly can't naysay Glenwood (a great town in which I've spent many happy times of my life), I certainly wouldn't write off Minneapolis. What I'd really like to know is what you expect Minneapolis to do... post police outside these houses all day every day? Tear down these houses? Crime is highly mobile, and any such efforts are not likely to reduce crime, only to displace it. That was the whole fallacy that tore down Block E. -michael libby (cleveland/north mpls) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Michael C. Libby <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> public key: http://www.ichimunki.com/public_key.txt web site: http://www.ichimunki.com ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE9qsFO4ClW9KMwqnMRArdqAJ4jls1DiWVlcPrcghAYoBTwy7FLXQCbB01j J9f0T5HcbXf5lER6jP6Mwbk= =s5Ih -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
