Wizardmarks:Cities, states and nations own libraries to have access to certain kinds of evidence of their own and other civilizations organized in a useable fashion. Most often we give more lip service to that than we part with money for those libraries. Look at how little we devote to libraries here in Minneapolis, how little in the state. You cannot say that, overall, too much money has been devoted to libraries. You could say, however, that too little has been invested in libraries. JM: And you connect that with Cesar Pelli, how? I've read a lot of comments about "moving the library into the 21st century", but I find those to be glittering generalities. Like it or not, we and the library are IN the 21st century. Exactly what are the inferior aspects of the library that you think need a desperate remedy? Every time I go there, it seems to work just fine. This kind of talk strikes me as the kind of thing corporate boards do to justify writing a huge contract with some prospective CEO. In that case, the stockholders are not allowed to vote down the contract before it is signed and they are on the hook. And we who pay for library costs are in a similar fix. We can vote out all the board members who blow the budget on one human, but that presume we have real alternatives. I'm as big a fan of libraries as anyone out there. But that is NOT the issue here. The issue has to do with HOW the available money is used.
Michael Atherton asks about cities with Republican mayors: "U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno issued a written statement Monday, noting that across the country "homicide is at its lowest point in 33 years." But according to the FBI data, released Monday, the city of Los Angeles had the third highest homicide rate in the United States during the first six months of 2000, with Chicago taking second place and New York City topping the list. More worrisome was the fact that Los Angeles had a sharp rise in murders while other major cities saw their rates remain stable or vary only slightly, officials said." In DFL-led Minneapolis, the 1999-2000 change was from 47 to 50. In 1995, the total was 95. It is hard to quantify the contribution of each element of law enforcement, but the DFL Council hired and then rehired Robert Olson. Robert Olson managed the police force during the drop from 95 to 47. This is the kind of think we longer-term residents look at when judging how effective our city government is in areas that matter. Reading about Richard Riordan and the LA police reminded me of our last police mayor, Charles Stenvig. And that reminded me of the fact that the police union once had CLOUT in this town. The fading of that clout and the fading of the Republican Party in Minneapolis are pretty much parallel stories. Puzzling over the lack of clout of this union in a union town, I suddenly remembered the fights over residency and city jobs. And then it came to me: The Council can safely support the Chief against the union members for the simple reason is that the Chief chose to live in his city whereas most union members chose to relocate themselves where they have no significance to elected officials. They followed the white flight to the suburbs, not realizing how much it was going to hurt them in the area of political influence. They won the battle against required residency. But their victory was Pyrrhic in that they can't vote where they don't live. Moreover, since they hardly ever stick up for the interests of any OTHER union, they can't rally other unions, either. They are pretty much onlookers in our political battles. Jim Mork Cooper Neighborhood Minneapolis __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Y! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your web site http://webhosting.yahoo.com/ _______________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:mpls@;mnforum.org Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
