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Most evidence of the current recession is invisible. We don’t see the unemployed on breadlines. We don’t see more than the usual beggars at freeway ramps. But when a developer runs out of money and abandons a project halfway through, it serves as a public face of hard times. The development at 46th Avenue and 46th Street has been stalled for a very long time. Wildflowers have started to bloom on the piles of dirt. For a while graffiti marked the site and kids roamed about it like a jungle gym, but now the graffiti has been removed, there’s a much taller cyclone fence to prevent vandalism, and it looks like the project may be springing back to life. The developer appeared before the Planning Commission to talk about a new concept for the development, and city officials are generally encouraged and optimistic. See more on this LINK |
DFL is fighting back against Republican budget
BY ED FELIEN
 About 30 people came to a meeting on the hottest night of the year on Tuesday, June 7, at Pearl Park to hear local DFL state legislators talk about how the proposed Republican budget is going to affect city, county and state governments.
City Council Member Gary Schiff said the proposed cuts to local government aid (LGA) would be the equivalent of cutting funds for the fire department. He said he was quite saddened as a gay man to see that the Republican dominated Legislature didn’t have the time to pass a budget, but did have time to pass a constitutional amendment to prohibit gay marriage.
State Representative Jim Davnie, who did most of the work organizing the meeting, agreed that the Republicans have targeted LGA and school aid. In 2001 substantial changes were made to the property tax formula. At that time 60 percent of the property tax revenue came from businesses and 40 percent came from homeowners. Today, that situation is reversed and 60 percent of the revenue comes from homeowners and 40 percent comes from businesses.
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Offering a fair and balanced solution
BY GOVERNOR MARK
DAYTON
Just ten days remain for Minnesota’s Republican legislators to decide whether they will agree to the fair and balanced solution I have offered to the state’s budget deficit. By “fair and balanced,” I mean one which resolves almost two-thirds of the remaining deficit by cutting spending and the other one-third by raising income taxes on only the richest 2% of all Minnesotans.
The Minnesota Department of Revenue says that those highest-income citizens now pay smaller percentages of their incomes in state and local taxes than almost everyone else. Asking them to pay more of their fair share, while sparing senior citizens, public school children, college students, people with disabilities and others from the serious harm the Republicans’ proposed service cuts would cause them, is a fair and sensible solution.
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Seward Walkers up and running
BY ED FELIEN
When people at the meeting of the Seward Neighborhood Group’s Crime and Safety Committee brought up the idea of people walking around the neighborhood in an organized manner, Kathy Sikora reminded the group that Seward had a Stroll Patrol for about seven years. It had started many years ago as a West River Road Walk after a woman was assaulted there. Eventually, though, interest in the group flagged and it stopped walking on an organized basis.
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Hunger strike ends as Bishop, Congressman Ellison, officials intercede
On Wednesday, June 1, retail cleaning workers with CTUL (Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en Lucha—Organization of Workers United in the Struggle) and their allies agreed to end a 12-day hunger strike at the request of faith leaders and elected officials who pledged to press Cub Foods management to agree to meet with the workers’ organization to discuss a proposed code of conduct.
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Starting Over
BY ANNE WINKLER-MOREY
 It is that time of year when blooming crab apples produce amnesia, causing us to forget our February pledge: “Not one more winter.” We overdose on flowers, noses painted with the tell-tale signs of pollen. Like new mothers giddy with baby-love, we forget the pain we have just experienced and start thinking we could handle another one—another baby, another year in Minnesota.
This year, however, I will not be swayed by pink blossoms. I’m taking my job hunt and my life-partner, David, on the road for 14 months of pedaling.
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Easy Solutions
BY TONY BOUZA
I’m now a very old person—actually most people my age are dead—and in no mood to do much of anything, much less write a very tiring article about a tiresome business. The publisher often, flatteringly, asks me to pen something—maybe it’s just because the price is right. Anyhow, I mostly resist. I’m trying to be a Zen master of mopery.
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Eric Holder protest: serious and spirited
By Ed Felien
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| Deb Konechne welcoming Eric Holder to Augsburg |
Eric Holder, the U. S. attorney general, came to town on Friday, May 27, to support the City of Minneapolis’s new Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. The program is actually a duplication of a program developed in Seattle that funded a web of agencies to support youth mentoring, job training and anger regression therapy.
In Minneapolis there is little money to fund such new initiatives (responsibilities normally assumed by the County) because the State Legislature has slashed local government aid and the mayor is obsessed with trying to find $250 million dollars to give to billionaire owners of the Vikings and the Timberwolves. But Holder came to pat them on the back, nevertheless, and he met with members of the Somali community to reassure them that his agency and the FBI were not targeting Somalis or Muslims in the War on Terror, even though at times that’s the way it seems.
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Reflecting on the work we have done together
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Bernadeia H. Johnson |
As I near the end of my first year as superintendent, I have been reflecting on the work we have done together. I was inspired, as I began the year, by the actor Danny Glover, who dedicates every performance to someone. It might be Nelson Mandela or the old man who guards the stage door, but he is always working for someone other than himself. This focus gives his acting purpose and makes his work more meaningful.
Following Glover’s lead, I dedicated my work this year to the 3,100 college-bound kindergarten students who entered our school doors. I made a commitment to them and to their families that they would be reading by winter break. I was pleased to announce in March that over 60 percent of kindergarten students achieved or exceeded reading at ‘level B’ or higher. At the mid-year point, approximately one-third of kindergarten students already achieved reading levels that met or exceeded those expected for the end of kindergarten.
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Franklin Avenue looks to the future
BY ED FELIEN
 Franklin Avenue is named for one of the most important figures in the American Revolution, Benjamin Franklin.
A printer, publisher of “Poor Richard’s Almanac,” statesman, ambassador to France and rival of Thomas Jefferson for the affections of fair ladies in Paris, Franklin was at once the most practical and the most visionary of the leaders of the early American Revolution. He understood the value of small business and the necessity of a strong central government to regulate commerce.
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Good-bye Shelly
BY ED FELIEN
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| Sheldon Kleve |
“Why can’t you be more like Sheldy,” my motherwould say when I’d done something particularly bad. Sheldon Kleve, who my mother called Sheldy and everyone else called Shelly, was an altar boy. He went to St. Helena’s Catholic School and always looked like an angel, but the Shelly I knew also smoked cigarettes, drank beer, played the guitar and sang bawdy country-western songs.
We met in the back pews at the 9 o’clock children’s mass at St. Helena’s. I immediately recognized a soul mate. The nuns spent years trying to keep us quiet. Later, when I had a paper route delivering the Morning Tribune, I’d make sure King’s Bakery on 42nd Street was my last stop, and Shelly would slip me a powdered cinnamon donut out the side window.
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Development at 46th and 46th
Recounting the controversy about the proposed construction at 46th Street and 46th Avenue, Council Member Cam Gordon wrote to the Longfellow issues list on June 13:
“At a minimum, the proposed project will require the following land use applications:
* Rezoning to C3A, OR3 or R6.
* Conditional use permit for 52 dwelling units.
* Variance to reduce the rear yard setback from 11 feet to 8 feet.
* Variance to reduce the north side yard setback from 11 feet to 10 feet.
* Variance to reduce the front yard setback from 21 feet to 7 feet.
* Variance to reduce the drive aisle width for one surface parking stall to 0 feet and reduce the drive aisle width for seven enclosed tandem stalls to 0 feet.
* Site plan review.
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The corporate/GOP attack on America’s middle class
BY JIM HIGHTOWER
 Governor Scott Walker’s autocratic attempt to abrogate the democratic right of public employees to bargain with their governmental bosses is not wearing well with the public. Recent polls show that a mere one-third of Wisconsinites favor his blatantly-political power play, and that if he had told voters in the last year’s election that he intended to do this, he would’ve lost. After only one month in office, Walker’s approval rating has plummeted, and he’s become a national poster boy for right-wing anti-union extremism—indeed, he’s so out of step that he’s even being jeered by democracy fighters in Egypt!
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June 2011 
