While schools are appropriately the key discussion right now, part of the issue is connected to a larger challenge: Minneapolis has too many buildings. That's the problem but there may be some creative ideas out there which could make this part of the solution.
Here's what I mean: One of the points behind the school challenge is that the district has too many classrooms for the size of the student population. Maintaining these obviously sucks up money that could be used in classrooms. Meanwhile, library hours have been cut dramatically because we do not have the resources to support full hours with the number of libraries we have. There are similar issues with the parks, which have seen a dramatic increase in facilities in the past decade. And the city has the same challenge, which is why we are in the middle of an enterprise wide facility study that has the goal of finding places for us to consolidate....and hopefully selling off unneeded property. In our "innovative" form of government, all of us are struggling with these challenges independently. I could use some guidance from the list...on list or off....about how this discussion can be brought together. In some cases groups found ways to work together (Barb may give some input on how that happened in Whittier) But in many cases we continue to make decisions independently of each other and in the process suck up more operating expenses. Example: Burroughs School is wonderful but it's really unfortunate that it was built next to an existing park building....so city taxpayers are paying to operate one gym---staff and expenses--in the school and one gym half a block away at the park. Example: A library sits across the street from Rosevelt School but when there were conversations to build a new one, the choice was to move it further away, instead of across the street into the school where both students AND the community could use it....and staffing could be shared. (Twenty hours of library staff SUPLIMENTED with 20 hours of school staff would look really nice right now. So would the saved operating expenses for the library, part of which could be used to help the schools with THEIR operating expenses.) I raise this because innovative thinking about all of this could be part of a solution to some of our current needs. If, for example, some city service was decentralized from City Hall and moved into part of one of the schools with space....allowing the city to sell a property and share operating costs in the school. If, for example, Walker Library was moved into the school district's Lehman Center....and the valuable land at Hennepin and Lagoon was sold.....If the Public Housing Authority moved into part of one of the schools and the existing building on the increasingly valuable north Washington was sold....If, for example, some satellite office of the city's Regulatory Services was moved to a library and the staff helped support a front desk in a move that kept the library open more hours..... I am putting up trial balloons...many of which I assume have some flaws... in an attempt to spur some creative thinking the we desperately need right now.....Thinking that could get us out of the petty turf battles that have, I believe, been a factor in getting us all into this mess and, battles that I'm certain will have to end if we have a prayer of getting us to a better place. Thoughts? R.T. Rybak 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
