“We Own This City”
By Mitch Berg
For a while, after winning complete lopsided electoral sweeps in Minneapolis or Saint Paul, the DFL victory parties would break out into chanting the line in the title.
Ownership has its privileges, as they way – but local DFLers sure seem to be squiggling away from any responsibility for that ownership.
A friend of the blog emails:
It was a town hall meeting to talk about the mess that is the Hamline Midway Neighborhood. The question was what is the city doing with Snelling University. The corner is so trashy, there is litter everywhere.
Our council member for the area, Mitra Jalali, proposes that the priority is trees and bicycle lanes.
She says it’s either that or a place for people to park their cars.
I mean, I suppose if we eventually get rid of all of the residents and businesses in the area, then no people will be there, thereby eliminating litter.
But, I have to believe, looking towards the thriving areas of St Louis Park’s West End or the shopping area in Eagan that Jalali is probably prioritizing the wrong thing.
All of Melo’s reporting of quotes on X from that meeting are pretty entertaining as the elected people try to dodge any responsibility for where we are today in St Paul.
Thats right, Councilwoman Jalali – it’s the design of the streets.
I’m adding emphasis to this next bit:
Worth looking at- Sandy Pappas saying she actually rides Green Line (but was getting a ride home from husband after the meeting). Leigh Finke saying that millions of dollars were given to DNR for trees and “they spent it in outstate which didn’t need it” so this year, gave “even more money” to Met Council “who has to spend it in the metro area.”
Yup, our problems are not enough trees …
Until the city gets serious about crime, drug-dealing, vagrancy and vandalism – all of which are epidemic at Snelling and University – the new trees would just serve as canvasas for taggers.
Sort of like that freaking Loon at the southwest corner of the intersection.
More on that later this week
October 21st, 2024 at 10:20 am
So if we just plant more trees people will stop treating the streets like garbage cans? Well, if my betters that think a man is really a woman say so, then it must be true, because the Betters say so.
I also love how Jalali’s response to a room full of her constituents complaining about a problem directly to her is to say what her constituents really want is something else. Can’t let the Narrative be derailed by a inconvenient thing like conflicting reality.
October 21st, 2024 at 11:16 am
This loon?
https://www.stpaulrealestateblog.com/sculpture-university-snelling/
What happened to the hotel, restaurant, condos, fitness club, offices and cinema depicted in the original site plan?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=st+paul+soccer+stadium+site+plan&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.apmcdn.org%2F20f15d27ca2d1ceb3cd26e1d9580cb116440ab95%2Funcropped%2F4df3c0-20160218-soccer-stadium.jpg
October 21st, 2024 at 2:17 pm
But…but…but, what about the affordable housing?! Oh. Wait. What am I thinking?
October 21st, 2024 at 4:01 pm
One thing I noticed in walking around the office campus where I work (it’s designed by Eero Saarinen and is in Rochester) is that in the enclosed courtyards, there are plenty of trees, but in the ones available to the general public there are not. It is almost like the owner knows that ne’er-do-wells can hide in the trees before doing their damage.
Might be wise to suggest to our “betters” on the Met Council that before the trees go in, the cities need to attend to “getting criminals off the streets” and “giving people jobs so they don’t need to commit crimes to make a living.”
Side note regarding the use of transit; it actually turns out that using transit creates more pollution than driving until one has a really big truck, say a one ton pickup. The trick is that your car has the good sense not to burn gasoline while you’re not driving it. Typical bus efficiency in the city is about 25 passenger-miles per gallon of diesel, which correlates to about 18mpg, and then you’ve got the issue that you’re going a somewhat different direction than you’d drive….so it’s really the equivalent of 12-15mpg for gasoline.
October 22nd, 2024 at 1:16 am
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