On Tuesday, August 10, 2004, at 07:08 AM, Dorie Rae Gallagher wrote:
For a sage to speak of past wisdom...one should listen but for one who is stuck in the past.. another would be wise to step around.
Which well describes some of the archaic policies of the City of Minneapolis. This is a city asleep in the past while disruptive technologies remake or bypass us...
Our once fair city wants you to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars or more on a residence that is built just like they were in the 19th century, a collection of sticks and boards crudely nailed together in an often not friendly climate. Our city is not getting a lot of takers for this scheme... instead the empty nesters that our city thinks will buy those couple hundred thousand dollar "lofts" buy an RV for less than half that. They set up housekeeping in the driveway and forget their crumbling home. Inspections sends them a flurry of warnings, threats, summonses, and bench warrants. By the time they send out the wrecker to impound the RV it and the empty nesters are off to Florida for the winter and there's a big new fence and gate around the property anyway.
By next summer the kids have moved back home, turned the new garage into a neat little apartment with corn fired heat, stuffed all the contents that would fit through the back door into the house, and built a carport for less than a thousand dollars with the kit they got at Fleet Farm. Mom and Dad with the RV pop in and out from time to time, but by the time Inspections gets the big tow truck out they're gone again.
A couple years go by, dad has a stroke, and mom's eyes are going so neither can drive... Inspections is waiting to get even and the Councilman and neighborhood group are drooling at the possibility that they'll have to sink a couple hundred thousand dollars into the old house. But over the years the vines have grown to make that tall fence around the property impossible to see through... and over a 3 day weekend a $40,000 12 foot by 36 foot modular cabin, wheelchair accessible and built to Minnesota Code, is rolled onto a waiting foundation.
Another year goes by, one of the kids gets married and is expecting twins, and they talk of fixing up the old house. They come up with a cost effective plan but Inspections insists on a pre-inspection before even considering the permit application. A squadron of inspectors has a field day at the family homestead, then spends the rest of the week issuing every known directive that the family cease, desist, comply with, etc. immediately.
After another 3 day weekend Inspections in all their glory appears at the homestead with at least a thousand dollars an hours worth of equipment- 3 lowboy trailers, a backhoe, front end loader, and a whole fleet of dump trucks. A night shift public works employee now on time and a half slowly torches open the gate. Inspectors, Council Member, and similar hangers on Jubulantly rush in... only to find the cabin, garage, carport, and RV gone and but a shell of a tired house remaining. Dejectedly the City of Minneapolis' minions return to their downtown cubicles and the workers have a profitable day with but the house to dispose of. The land goes tax forfeit as half the neighborhood has by then...
Meanwhile our family which has wisely saved the money they didn't waste in Minneapolis is settled around the private lake that is part of their 160 acres in greater Minnesota. The RV, cabin, garage/apartment, and carport have all found a home there, joined by a new 3 bedroom home that cost less than rehabbing the old house in Minneapolis. Away from the lake sits a new pole barn, housing the family business and the jobs that moved from Minneapolis with them.
Portable buildings... another disruptive technology that Minneapolis had better catch up too!
I can point out all the car dealerships and best yet remember the corvettes touring Porky's while munching on onion rings
And what great wonders of "urban renewal" have replaced our Porky's? Fortunately St.Paul still has there Porky's!
but honey...time marches on and we best get moven cause the best is yet to come! Drugs and druggies will not prevail on Lake Street.
But they certainly have on the Northside and will continue to do so if city policies do not change.
Crack Avenue Crime Update: The drug dealers and hookers that Third Way Network's rehab project was supposed to drive out stayed up at their end of the block last night, but were still doing a brisk business until 2 am.
hangin' on in Hawthorne,
Dyna Sluyter
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