A reminder about the housing inspections department (my information is from a friend who is a long-time inspector):
There are about 160,000 housing units in the city. There are about 30 inspectors. Do the math yourself. The department's budget has been cut again and again, despite the fact that the inspections fees more than pay for the cost (in fact, I believe some of the revenue goes to general fund). In most cities, the mayor lives in fear of his inspections department, because landlords and property owners will often offer bribes to inspectors, and newspapers and TV stations like to run stings on them to boost sales/ratings. However, the Minneapolis department was examined minutely by the FBI during the investigations of our former council members (Herron, Biernat). They found exactly nothing wrong. Zilch. Nada. Now I won't say that the deparment is perfect; nor will I say that all the inspectors are models of efficiency and rectitude. But Minneapolis' housing inspections program is considered a model, one which is copied by other cities. Its inpsectors sit on boards of national and international inspections groups. If you want an interesting question, ask why the mayor wants to take about 30 percent of the deparment's budget to give to the fire department--when the fire deparment will only be doing about seven percent of the inspections work. This means a huge cut in the number of inspectors who would be checking units like the one that burned. --M. G. Stinnett Jordan Neighborhood REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. ________________________________ 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
