If litterbugs were prosecuted, we'd need to double Amy Klobuchar's office. Not to be too insulting, but are people AWARE that prosecution is not something you do for free? It costs serious money. And taxpayers have shown a RESISTANCE to anything that costs them MONEY. Now you tell me. A guy drops his McDonald's bag and creates a social eyesore. How MUCH money you want to spend to bring him to "justice"? Which is why I said that civil society is based on VOLUNTARY observance of laws. Now, if police cars will run stop lights for no good reason, why is it people expect kids to care that much about dropping litter? Is a bag on the street somehow a bigger issue to society than failure to obey traffic signals? Or obey no parking signs? This is why I think democracy is such a hard thing to keep. People seem to be unwilling to think in perspective like this. They get annoyed and they just want to ACT without really considering the consequences. I have a plastic bag in my car. When I'm driving through Cooper and see trash sitting in the street, I pull to the side, get out and put the trash in the bag. Why? I like my neighborhood. So I take care of it. I don't ask what kind of ANIMAL dropped this trash! I don't wish they'd PROSECUTE (i.e., spend thousands of dollars on a very petty crime). So I think people need to get real. Obviously some people have kids and then are clueless about raising them to be responsible. Until we can castrate the clueless, we just have to try to be the kind of people we wish everybody would be.
City Web Site
For a directory, click on "contact us" and then choose city services directory.
Nuisance Offenses
What is going to be the "consequences" for panhandling? Maybe a paying job? What about public urination? As a citizen of this city, I think there shouldn't be "punishment" for public urination until such a day as it can be shown there was really an alternative. I go around town and see lots of "no public toilet" signs. To repeat what I said in the island thread, if you don't make "private" possible, you'll get "public". Somehow, some way, people without homes have GOT to go. It is a total lack of realism to eliminate public toilets and then make it an offense to urinate publicly.
Attitudes
After reading the list manager's caution about personal attacks, I thought about some of the patterns of this list. One of those patterns are the people who don't try to define and solve a problem. They just don't LIKE the city. They post day in and day out how miserable it is. I wish they would make their own list called "Minneapolis sucks" and not try to pretend they have a real interest in civic issues. This list should be for people who value Minneapolis enough to want to improve it. If you can't think of a single good thing to say about the city, then you probably aren't seriously interested in discussion.
________________________________________ Jim Mork Cooper Neighborhood Longfellow Community Minneapolis, MN We think. You'll like it here. And we're more fun than a barrel of Norwegians
_________________________________________________________________ MSN 8: Get 6 months for $9.95/month. http://join.msn.com/?page=dept/dialup
TEMPORARY REMINDER: 1. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. 2. If you don't like what's being discussed here, don't complain - change the subject (Mpls-specific, of course.)
________________________________
Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
