In the last few days we've heard the predictable responses to
our city's financial crisis. The usual critics of all things
government and especially if it involves unions have given the
expected knee jerk responses. Seizing the opportunity, they called
for draconian pay cuts and vaporization of the city departments they
love to hate. Meanwhile, all over city offices folks are cringing and
hoping this financial crisis thing will just go away.
Our financial crisis is not going to go away.
I and a few others have suggested some creative win-win
solutions to the budgetary shortfalls, and pretty much been ignored.
Lacking any new solutions, I suspect Minneapolis will follow the same
script as East St.Louis, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, and every other
dying city.
Act One is now over. Through the boom of the 1990s the city
spent like drunken sailors. There wasn't a floozie of a development
that they didn't patronize. Not all these $$$ were wasted though-
they left us a huge concrete relic on Hennipen Avenue (hard to
believe we paid over a million dollars to move that thing 2 blocks)
and many similar monuments to financial imprudence throughout the
city. Many of the players from this first act have been replaced. But
we'll still be paying their pensions, and for their mistakes, for
decades.
Act Two is just now beginning. In high drama that would do
the classics proud we will see services cut while taxes continue to
rise. As city workers pay is cut the brass will stay warm and cozy in
their castle with the cookoo clock. The police chief will continue to
tour the city in his Lincoln Navigator, ever ready to give a
reassuring soundbite at every murder scene. Meanwhile, for sale signs
spread like weeds as not just whites but anyone who can flees the
city.
Act Three is a few years off, but if you want a preview just
visit East St.Louis or any similar city on life support. City hall
and it's environs will look pretty normal- all those foreclosures and
forefetures will keep the courts busy. But take a walk about the city
(pretty safe, criminals tend to leave an area with no economic
activity).
The streets aren't really dirt- the unrepaired potholes and
unswept remainder of the pavement just make it look that way. There
are plenty of empty buildings, in fact they'll probably have to add
an extra server just to list all the tax forfeit properties. Most are
falling down and a hazard, but the city can't afford to demolish
them. Most of the cities revenue will come from large corporations
that couldn't easily move- railroads and such.
The police don't patrol much- the city can't afford the gas
and wear on the rusty old cruisers. The snowplowing is kinda thin
too- the main streets get plowed by the county, beyond that you'd
better have four wheel drive. Unless you're lucky and have a council
member on your street. With so many abandoned buildings and lots of
kids with little other amusements there's lots of fires, but the
response is fickle. Then again, when the water system is unreliable
and the rusty pumper's tanks leak there isn't much the Fire
Department can do anyway.
Amid this abandonment live a few hardy soles- mostly the very
young and old who can't afford to leave. They pilfer electricity from
the power company with jumper cables and the city can't afford to
bill for water. Like Detroit, wetlands have appeared in low spots
thanks to broken water mains that go unrepaired decades... It's a
rough life and the casualties are many. Fortunately the county takes
care of those expenses so the city hall denizens won't have to take a
salary cut...
from increasingly abandoned Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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