A BIG gold star to Thomas Thai for outside-the-box thinking. I hope the board and the mayor read and seriously think about such ideas. We need to RECOVER from past booboos. And Thomas has shown us just ONE way of doing that. We made bad loans. Why not start thinking how the city can salvage VALUE out of those bad loans! Right, Vicky???
Wizard Marks:"This is a time not to panic. We are too invested in this building of a new library to back out at this juncture." Straw man, Wizard. No one is "panicking". On the contrary, we're trying FINALLY to spend SENSIBLY about this thing. And "in too deep to back out" is con game talk. It is NEVER too late to avoid a foolish mistake. "it will be much more expensive to have the library stay in the "temporary" building which was not designed to hold the weight of books" How do you know that. Considering Thomas' idea, I think an independent engineering opinion is most appropriate, not these amateur guesses. Carol Becker:"And if we slow down or stop this, we will be repeating the failure of our past and it will be our children who will have to pay." Um. No. The DESIGN was bad, not the price. If any MISTAKE was made, let's NOT do it again. Let's NOT buy platinum-priced architects, as if the books would only be happy if the building they are in shows up in architecture magazines around the world. David Shove:"Welfare for big and medium size businesses are at the expense of money for essential city services" In which context the proposal to cut 150 police officers from our already overstretched police force gets REALLy annoying!!! Bill Cullen:"b) Create gap funding programs to move homeless folk into existing apartments and/or help people buy their own homes through programs like Mr. Graham proposed?" I am not rigidly opposed to this. I WOULD sort of like to know that, like Xcel and Minnegasco, the recipients aren't just padding their profit margin by turning to public money. Certainly subsidizing housing for homeless people scores WAY higher in my book than subsidizing the multi-million dollar salaries of our sports stars. To Margaret: Let the city arrest them! Finally a REAL affordable housing program. Just release a few rapists and murderers to make room for the homeless. Maybe we can get another Time Magazine cover article out of it (oops, flipped into sarcasm mode unconsciously). -------------- Jim Mork--Cooper "Only a LUNATIC would cut schools in order to pay for more bombs." "Depart from me, you cursed of my Father. Inasmuch as you have not done it to the least of these my brethren, you have not done it unto me." Get your free Web-based E-mail at http://www.startribune.com/stribmail TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Send all posts in plain-text format. 2. Cut as much of the post you're responding to as possible. ________________________________ 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
