If the goal (or even just one of the goals) of this list is "community building", then WHAT sense does it make to retain people who think Minneapolis is terrible, finished, or anything negative like that. I will make the modest proposal that only BOOSTERS of Minneapolis, people who think it is a happening place and irreplaceable in Minnesota will ever "build community" here. And the people who live here (or elsewhere) who can't seem to send anything but smears of our city and its habits are merely trying to destroy any community that tries to appear. I doubt such people really build community anywhere. Whoever this shoe fits might contemplate these things. If you can't say something NICE about Minneapolis, maybe Mom was right in saying to keep your thoughts to yourself!
Public Safety
If you go to the financial reports page on the city web site, you will see that city expenditures on the public safety function for fiscal year 2002 was $175 milion, which is about one-fourth of the total of $690 million. This is actually a HIGHER percentage than the year before that. The address:
http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/financial-reports/cafr2002/StatisticalSectionUnaudited.asp
Now, I'm a LITTLE surprised by this low figure since I believe the mayor told us that police and fire were such a LARGE part of the budget that the state cuts made cuts in police and fire inescapable. I thought the figure we got was 80 percent. But maybe that was 80 percent of the expenditures that city leaders actually controlled.
By the way, the 2000 figure for debt service was $44 milion. That is 6.4 percent of the total. Higher than the national debt percentage(of GDP), but not something that dictates our every decision.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
"America better beware of a candidate who is willing to stretch reality inorder to win points." George Bush, September 2000, quoted in The Press Effect, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Oxford University Press, 2003, p. 53
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