BY ED FELIEN
The City Council will be holding a budget hearing on the city budget this Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 6:05 p.m. in City Chambers, Room 317, City Hall. Mayor Hodges wants to raise property taxes by 5.5% to hire 35 new police officers. That’s about $2.4 million for more cops.
A lot of inner city people get nervous about hiring more police. When MPR checked on residency of police, they found that only 5.4% of them actually lived in the city. The head of the Minneapolis Police Federation belongs to a neo-Nazi motorcycle gang for cops, City Heat. And the city had no complaints about police conduct in the homicides of Jamar Clark and Terrance Franklin.
The city doesn’t need more cops. Some neighborhoods need more help. But they need Welcome Wagon hosts and hostesses. They need Good Will Ambassadors from the city and county to explain how government programs can help them with food, health care, education and jobs. They don’t need thumpers from the suburbs coming in and disrespecting them.
I was talking with former 9th Ward City Council Member Kathy Thurber about life in Powderhorn. She will be coming to Minneapolis early next year to promote her new book, “Paris Thibideaux and the World of Lost Things,” about a boy, a dream and a gift for making something out of nothing in Powderhorn Park. I asked her what she thought about trying good will ambassadors rather than more police. She said, “Much of what you proposed was very close to what we had in the ’90s with Community Crime Prevention and some of the NRP funds that neighborhoods used to staff up and fund programs. I know it wasn’t perfect, but is any of that still in place?
I’ll never forget the time our car was broken into 20 years ago and damaged badly, and all the police had to say was, ‘Well, you live here—what do you expect?’ ”
If you want to talk to the City Council about their priorities for 2017, your last chance is Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 6:05 p.m. in City Council Chambers, Room 317. You can sign up to speak a half hour early.
