On 12/10/03 9:42 AM, "Bill Cullen" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > P.S. Go to www.mndaily.com to read about students moving and enforcement of > over-occupancy. There are multiple articles.
I am a frequent reader of the Minnesota Daily. Today's issue contained a round-up of what was an unusually eventful semester, including a review of the duplex fire: http://www.daily.umn.edu/articles/2003/12/10/7823 Interesting note from this article: "Firefighters never determined an exact cause, only failing to rule out careless smoking as a possibility." It's kind of hard to charge someone for a crime when: 1. You don't know who to charge. 2. You don't know for sure that a crime was committed. That said, I do think CM Zerby has behaved as an opportunist since this fire occurred. As Bill Cullen pointed out, despite landlord negligence being ruled out as a possible cause of the fire, Zerby pushed hard for inspection sweeps and later in the same article, you see some results: "So far, city inspectors have completed approximately 450 inspections, with about 100 remaining. Firefighters � who inspect larger houses and apartment complexes � have completed 190 inspections, with 30 remaining. Ricardo Cervantes, district manager in housing inspections services, said the inspections should be completed by the end of the year. However, other students were not as happy. The city has issued 61 over-occupancy violations, which means some students living in those residences will be forced to move out." Unfortunately, the article does not discuss whether there were significant numbers of any actual safety violations. One might presume that there were not since it certainly would have been newsworthy if there had been. If that's the case, then I would say Bill Cullen is correct in concluding that all CM Zerby accomplished with his zeal for inspections is to force a large number of students to spend their winter break looking for someplace else to live. Nice! It's a good thing for CM Zerby that the city decided not to hold early elections after redistricting was completed. There's probably plenty of students who are ticked off enough to actually register to vote in Ward 2 just so they can help show him the door. Given his slim margin of victory over Cam Gordon, it probably wouldn't even take that many. Hopefully there will still be enough of them around who remember his anti-student shenanigans when he does finally come up for re-election. Mark Snyder Windom Park 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. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ 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
