Dear Editor:
This summer the city of Minneapolis is doing construction on 35th and 36th streets. My husband and I are blind and live between them. With such extensive construction, we have been quite challenged trying to plan routes to places in our neighborhood including bus stops.
It is annoying that the city has to do construction on both streets at once. The best-case scenario would have been to do one street at a time. Officials tell me it saves them money to do them simultaneously. If they had to do this, they should have planned to work in different parts of the area on each street, so there would always be one street free of obstacles and holes.
It has been even more frustrating trying to obtain accurate, up-to-date information about what intersections are currently being worked on and plans for the immediate future. 
What has angered me most is learning that only people living on 35th and 36th Streets received notices about the construction. City officials reasonably generalize that people on adjacent streets don’t need the information as critically as those living on the streets themselves. It is a significant added expense. But what about a case like ours where there are two consecutive streets under construction for several blocks each way? Don’t we who live between the two deserve to be kept diligently informed about the progress of the construction work? Officials have tried to make this a disability issue. It’s true that blindness complicates things. We don’t drive and don’t know where the work is until we come upon it. Often the trenches, tar, machinery, barricades, and/or signs cover such a massive area that there is no safe way for us to get through. Buses have had to be re-routed without much notice. If it hadn’t been for acquaintances of my husband’s on his regular bus route, he would have missed the bus. A blind friend of ours and his guide dog had to put their safety at risk by waiting in the street for a bus.
Even more disability-related for us is the lack of access to detailed information on the city’s web site. if one goes to the web site covering this construction project (http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/citywork/public-works/cip/3536/index.shtml) those who can see what is ahead of them get detailed, updated Arial maps of each three-block section of the construction. We who do not have this advantage get a text description of what’s happening in one seven block area when city officials feel like it.
This is not a disability issue only. There are others without disabilities that depend on their feet and public transportation for mobility. I hope if there are plans for consecutive streets with extensive construction in the future, city officials will not utilize these same strategies.

Rebecca Kragnes


Re: Mothers Fight,
6.26.02

The staff at Hennepin/ Powderhorn Partners share the community's distress at the events on June 12 when a 13-year-old allegedly beat a man to death. We also believe it's necessary to address the inaccuracies in your coverage of the event, “Fighting to save a neighborhood.” 
We would have liked to attend the June 4 West Powderhorn community meeting to discuss neighborhood violence, but we received short notice and were unable to attend. 
We were contacted by a neighbor of the family of the 13-year-old accused of the crime and asked to reach out to this family. Two of our staff visited the home, but finding no one home, they planned to return at a later date.Unfortunately, during that time, this terrible tragedy occurred. 
A life has been lost, and we are all the less for it. 
These tragedies can divide us or they can make us stronger. We are committed to working in and with the community. We all share a concern for children and families and want a safe community. We will continue to examine our operations and procedures to try to ensure a constructive and appropriate response when we are contacted with concerns. The issues are complicated and the stakes are high, so we must do all we can to respond.
We welcome community involvement. If anyone has questions or concerns, please call me at Powderhorn Partners at 728-7502. 

Kristine Martin
Program Director, 
PowderhornPartners