Mark Snyder wrote:
Until we see that, I'll stand by my point that McLaughlin hasn't had to make
the same choices with NRP vs. other city needs that Mayor Rybak and the city
council has, even if he was one of the architects of it in the beginning.
Then you have missed the point entirely. It isn't the funding alone
that is at issue, though Rybak's supporters always want to spin that
way. Rybak and the council have systematically undermined the principles
of the NRP. They created CPED out of MCDA as the vehicle to undermine
the principles of the NRP. They cut the partnership we were building
between the police and the citizenry of the core city. They did it to
take power away from citizens and hoard it to themselves and keep their
taxes high, though they think they're keeping them low.
An example: A little sunshine of a girl, Tyesha Edwards, was murdered
when a bullet came through the wall of her home on Chicago Ave. in
Powderhorn neighborhood. The people who were witnesses volunteered
information to the police. All of us working together, with the help of
CCP/SAFE, NRP, neighborhood organizations, and collaborations built the
relationships that made that possible. The collaborative effort that
brought that change needs to be nurtured daily.
NRP has these principles (fill in the others, oh, ye with better
memories): 1. neighborhood decision making and implementation; 2. NRP
independence from the city's development agency (MCDA or CPED); 3.
freedom from strict adherence to centrally determined goals; 4.
notifying neighborhoods of planned development and notifying them early
enough so they could impact the decision; 5. continuing collaborative
processes so that decisions are not imposed on the citizens.
Baldly stated, RT and supporters set out to take the decisions away from
the residents and hoard them to themselves solely to lower their taxes
or to keep them from rising. RT and council punished the city rather
than insist that the legislature continue to send money back to
Minneapolis that we had already put in far above what we take back out.
In so doing, they emphasize, ad nauseum, that citizens cannot be
entrusted with self determination in regard to their neighborhoods and
their persons, and a fair portion of our jointly held money.
The entire takeover by RT was an effort by the well to do to return to
the good old days of choking the strivers for their own good. My reply
to that runs along the lines of an Eric Idle tune, available by
googling, which begins, "F*** you very much the FCC," though I would, of
course, supply other--and additional--units of government as my target
Um, here's what galls me about the fictions being perpetrated by the
McLaughlin campaign and supporters. There was no "cutting 150 police
officers and X firefighters at once from the city's budget" - the high point
for the city's police staffing of 938 was about seven or eight years ago.
What galls me is the complete ignorance of the situation in the core
city that is displayed here. CCP/SAFE which, regardless of deserved and
undeserved criticism, actually marshaled a lot of city services to work
with the police to clean out nests of people up to no good while
creating millions in costs to the city, state, and nation. CCP/SAFE has
been gutted under RT. It is now impossible for them to keep up with
specific situations that they had monitored and intervened in. Those
situations quickly get entirely out of hand and we're back to the place
that Graham, Lickness, Plante, myself and several others report here.
Like my kid being robbed at gunpoint on our front porch, Barb's husband
being robbed at gun point in their back yard, a sharp rise in the murder
rate. Gutted by RT.
McMahon, as a consequence, cannot put the force of his commission behind
the work that makes change, rather he spends all his time trying to work
without the trained and vetted people power to actually implement long
term change along with the neighborhoods. Thanks a toad ton, RT and city
council; I cannot tell you how much I treasure your gift to me and mine
and my neighbors on assuming office.
The cuts in police staffing started long before Mayor Rybak's administration
began. The 71 cops that Mayor Rybak has proposed to add will bring police
staffing up to 40 more than when his administration began. Those are the
facts, much as McLaughlin and his supporters would like to claim otherwise.
The spin you've put on this situation is remarkable. The cops who were
cut or positions left unfilled during the SSB administration were
absorbable, to a degree, because it was done very gradually so that the
PD had a chance to adjust. RT cut cops in one fell swoop because RT and
his supporters have no experience with the situation for the core city,
but do not want to support contending with the issues imposed on the
core city through red lining. You can spin this 'til the cows come home,
but the base reality is that the comfortable cannot see well enough to
support our city recovering from 40 and more years of both malicious and
blind neglect or solutions which only support a larger and larger social
services sector of misguided "fixers."
In my estimation RT and this council honored their fears and created a
budget that reflects those fears. Pretending that cutting police,
undermining the NRP, removing citizen input to the process (can we say
park board?), and doing so like the local butcher, will be OK so long as
they personally do not have to put up with the consequences at their
houses, on their streets, at their shopping mall.
One way to insure that you continue to build larger prisons and a social
services sector big enough to eat New York is by continually inculcating
and reinculcating in the strivers that they have no say in the decisions
that affect their lives. By so doing we create poverty and make
ourselves into poverty pimps. This, in my estimation, is counterproductive.
At the same time, this path gives a lot of scope and opportunity to
those people who have, for whatever reason, refused to evolve. Every
sort of antisocial behavior you can think of--and a lot that you could
never think of--has room to grow and fester in the atmosphere created by
RT and the council. Certainly the murder and mayhem in Jordan and
surrounding neighborhoods is proof. The deterioration we're again
experiencing on the southside speaks to that as well. Between those who
refuse to evolve and those who do not want to pay the legitimate costs
of creating and maintaining social evolution, the rest of us are really
having a tough time coping.
WizardMarks, Central
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