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I was perplexed reading the article about Minneapolis' emergency mental health response program ("Rocky start, shaky future," July 19). The program clearly is doing good work, has been commended by health care providers and, according to the article, "has freed police officers from thousands of time-consuming calls involving complex issues of psychosis and depression." Isn't that one of the goals for reforming law enforcement?
The issue is whether this effective pilot program will become a permanent part of the city's emergency services. There are mixed messages at play. Jeremiah Ellison, chair of the City Council's Policy and Government Oversight Committee, stated, "I think that we need to be able to fully integrate this into how our city conducts safety and keeps neighbors safe" (while saying at the same time that he needed more time to consider amending the contract length). Yet the council has extended the pilot project's contract for only one year.
It also appears that the Office of Community Safety, into which the program was recently integrated, may be undermining its effectiveness; the article reports that the leadership of the crisis response team has been excluded from Office of Community Safety meetings. The office did not even respond to questions from the Star Tribune for the article.
If this program can free police from having to deal with mental health crises (which we know can end tragically) and can effectively manage these difficult situations, it should be made a permanent part of the city's emergency structure. Seems like a win-win to me.
Robin Lackner, Mendota Heights
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The city of Minneapolis, promoting failure? How else should we understand launching the pilot project for the Minneapolis Behavioral Crisis Response team with "two old vans that kept breaking down" and offices in a "literal storage closet"? If the city of Minneapolis leadership isn't capable, after two years, of assessing whether this program is successful, and, if successful, can't be extended beyond one year — every following year, presumably, considered a "startup year" with a possible new agency — what then?
Management 101. If this or any two-year pilot program is deemed successful, that should reasonably generate a commitment of three to five years to provide for necessary staffing and financial stability. If all else fails, my neighbor citizens, hope for an early November and leadership alternatives.
Judith Monson, St. Paul
U/FAIRVIEW RELATIONSHIP
Some partnership
As a retired janitor who was still working at the University of Minnesota in Unit J hospital on the Stadium Village campus, I had a firsthand look at the Fairview takeover of the U hospitals and clinics on New Year's Day 1997.
This touted partnership was in name only, and we all knew it at the time. Janitors and engineers had the choice of staying with the U and moving onto the campus itself or moving over to the "Fairview family" if we wanted to stay working in the hospital and clinics. Once I had a look at what Fairview had to offer for a benefits and salary package, I ran to the employment office of the U and took one of the campus jobs the union held for us workers who wanted to stay with the U. The partnership between Fairview and the U only ran as deep as the name University/Fairview. The hospital and clinics were no more a part of the U "family" than a liquor store calling itself "3M Liquors" would be related to that company simply because it was a located a few blocks from 3M. The fact is the university wanted to get rid of the hospital and clinics, and it did. It sold them to Fairview. Fairview stuck with the university name only because of its proximity of the hospital to the main campus buildings and the misdirection it would give to the public thinking there actually was some sort of partnership between the two. There wasn't, and there isn't. Fairview calls the shots when it comes to anything that has to do with hospitals or medicine on the Minneapolis campus. Why do you think it thought it could sell the whole shebang to an outside health care company last spring?
Fairview is not the U's partner. Let's stop calling it that.
Larry Ripp, St. Paul
RETHINKING I-94
Keep pursuing land bridge idea
While I wasn't surprised that the Minnesota Department of Transportation couldn't embrace turning Interstate 94 in St. Paul into a boulevard ("Mixed reviews for I-94 proposals," July 18), I had hoped for more of an endorsement of the Rondo community's vision of reconnecting their neighborhood across the freeway using a land bridge. Unless there were technical reasons for the limited "respect" offered, I would have to conclude MnDOT is not capable of doing anything significant on its own to repair the damage freeways have caused to our cities. I certainly hope the city of St. Paul will be stepping to the forefront to champion the Rondo vision.
One other thought. An image was used in the story of the 1969 construction of the I-94 Lowry Hill Tunnel in Minneapolis at Hennepin-Lyndale. This portion of the freeway, along with the stretch on the south, west and north side of downtown was removed from MnDOT's Rethinking I-94 study sometime in 2018 or 2019 (communities were not informed about this). I would love to hear the city of Minneapolis champion the repair of its own freeway-damaged city. It's needed here, too.
John Van Heel, Minneapolis
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Why won't the Minnesota Department of Transportation include — as one of its public options for the I-94 reconstruction project in St. Paul — a land bridge over the freeway in the Rondo community? Rondo strongly supports it.
Many people of color — and white voters, too — now think of the original freeway's construction through Rondo's center in the 1950s and '60s as similar to the 1921 Tulsa race massacre that destroyed that city's Black Wall Street. It never recovered.
Rondo in St. Paul suffered a similar spike through its heart. I-94 destroyed 700 Rondo homes and 300 businesses. Imagine that happening in Woodbury or Edina. In the short term, the destruction was not as bad as in Tulsa. However, Rondo's losses led to large-scale losses of business and home wealth, resulting in worse health conditions for thousands. Those have led to higher illness and death rates that poorer communities anywhere suffer, and they continue today in Rondo.
To address these moral, cultural and economic mistakes, we should create a land bridge over I-94, changing Rondo and St. Paul forever. In the long run, it's an economically possible, fair and smart business move for everyone.
Richard Jewell, Minneapolis
CAR/BIKE RELATIONS
A tip: Don't frame it as a 'standoff'
Jeff Naylor has such a masculine, muscular perspective on interactions in "Rolling stop law can smooth car/bike relations" (Opinion Exchange, July 20). "But also, stopping often leads to a standoff in which a cyclist and a driver at right angles of a four-way stop eye each other like two gunslingers in an old Western waiting to see who makes the first move."
When I get to a four-way stop, I look around with gratitude, assuming that we're all neighbors and can do the right thing. I smile and wave and usually get great results. Sometimes I have to stop and let the car(s) go first! Wow. I can do that.
Biking and driving are both privileges. Being a neighbor is a privilege, an essential part of a civic society and the most important part of my day. I think we can all pitch in with that intent.
Patricia Neal, Minneapolis
