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01/09/2006: "How Minneapolis is planning to spend our money"

Last week ( December 19th) the Minneapolis City Council adopted our mayor’s 2006 budget. This budget increases the total budget by a little over 30 million dollars. It will result in increases in rent and property taxes for everyone who lives or owns property in Minneapolis.

This budget is a clear statement of priorities for the city, and the priorities are clear. The middle class and wealthy people are going to be taken care of, and the poor, well we don’t really have any poor people to worry about do we?

What do I mean? Well the budget and its hype are full of talk about more police, fire, and prosecutions. The largest increase by far is the Police, followed by increases it the Fire department, the city attorney’s office,. The bureaucracy is well taken care of with more money for the convention center, regulatory services, and economic development.

Who gets cut? Anyone. Well yea, the Health department, The Way to Grow Program (for pre-natal care in inner city neighborhoods) the Youth Coordinating board and Transportation. In fact the only part of Public Works that did get a cut was Transportation.

What does this mean, and why should you care? If you have plenty of money, you probably don’t need to care.

I am against spending money on more Police, why, because I believe in crime, no, because Police do not prevent crime. In fact, preventing crime is not the job of police, the job of the police is to investigate crime that has been committed. A recent study in Washington DC, took an increase of 25% in the number of police officers before there was an impact on the number of crimes. That is a lot more police.

The answer to crime is to have strong communities that look after each other. We have some communities like that in our city. Anyway, to most of the people that I know, our police are as much a source of harassment and denigration as protection and service. Until this changes, more police is not something I welcome.

On the other hand, the work of the city health department, Way to grow, and the Youth Coordinating Board have made real differences in people’s lives. No difference, it appears to the people that the Mayor cares about.

What about help for the homeless in the budget. Oh yea, this is the mayor that wants panhandlers to get licenses, and supports it being illegal to camp out on city property. I forgot.

The whole budget can be found at
Minneapolis Mayor's recomended budget, 2006
Minneapolis Mayor's recomended budget, 2006




Check it out. It’s your money, or at least it was.