Teach our children well — about money, with local resources
Why was St. Paul spending $900,000 for Youth Financial Literacy curriculum in St. Paul Schools and Rec Centers from BlackFem to teach victimhood and “wealth justice”? Why not invest that time and money into developing useful skills to meet the goals of the NAACP and the Federal Reserve of self-esteem, creating lifelong success with money, developing rewarding careers, building wealth, and passing that wealth to the next generation?
There are St. Paul Schools Business Education teachers, local financial professionals, and St. Paul Junior Achievement who are willing to create and deliver a K-12 age-appropriate financial literacy curriculum from a wealth of quality existing resources. It can be done for 10% of what Mayor Carter’s Office of Financial Empowerment is wasting nearly $1,000,000 of scarce taxpayer money on to pay BlackFem to create a product from whole cloth. BlackFem would then own the product, and St. Paul would have to buy a license to use a curriculum St. Paul paid to create, with no ownership rights. That makes no sense.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Stop wasting money on a new, unfinished, overdue, untested, non-peer reviewed curriculum. With a locally developed and delivered curriculum, St. Paul would own it with the copyrights to evolve it and reproduce it without licensing fees, forever. Maybe even license it to others and create revenue for the city.
I’m sure Mayor Her, with her business acumen, knows financial literacy can be taught far better with far fewer tax dollars. St. Paul youth are not victims of “the financial system,” they are young people who, with the right fiscal education, can be future millionaires next door.
Gregg Adler, Afton. The writer is a retired St. Paul school teacher.
Relief is at hand!
Because of the billions of dollars we will no longer be spending to support fraud in our government programs, we can now look forward to our elected officials dramatically lowering our taxes.
Every cloud has a silver lining.
John Heller, North St. Paul
On and on and on
The Monday, Dec. 29, article concerning Donald Trump’s war plans in the Caribbean only goes to show how things do not change, ever. Good old-fashioned gun boat diplomacy at its very best. And guess what? For oil. It goes on and on and on. Forget renewable energy. No money to be made there.
Tom Bates, St. Paul
Stop the pandering. Start governing
Minnesotans, how much taxpayer money has to be stolen before we finally say enough? No one expects fraud to be eliminated entirely, but it is unacceptable to build systems that invite abuse instead of preventing it.
This is not an isolated failure. It is systemic, deep and long-standing. Hardworking taxpayers are watching their money disappear while being told this is just how government works. That excuse is insulting.
All three branches of government share responsibility for this mess. Years of weak oversight, political protection, and refusal to act have brought us here. The problem is not a lack of information. It is a lack of courage.
Partisanship has replaced leadership. Decisions are made to protect political interests, not the people paying the bills. That approach has failed Minnesota.
Real people rely on these programs, and unchecked fraud puts them at risk. There is no accountability to voters and no respect for taxpayers asked to give more every year.
Enough. Stop pandering. Start governing. Minnesotans deserve leaders with the backbone to do what is right, not what is politically convenient.
Jay Reeves, Victoria, MN
Minneapolis shows the way on Summit Avenue
St. Paul’s showcase street is threatened by a multi-million dollar overhaul that will remove all the bike lanes — first of their kind in Minnesota — and build an above-grade trail.
Minneapolis is widely regarded as having one of the best bicycling infrastructures in the country. So how might our upstart twin tell us to proceed?
They’d tell us the 9-foot-wide, buffered bicycle lanes on Summit Avenue west of Lexington Avenue are fine just as they are. Minneapolis Public Works confirmed in an OpenCity data request that they have about 20 miles of buffered bike lanes. The email states, “The City has never replaced a buffered bicycle lane with an above-grade bike trail.” And that, “there are no upcoming reconstruction projects that would replace buffered bicycle lanes with above-grade trails.” In other words — stay the course west of Lexington.
A recent pedestrian fatality at Summit and Dale Street has raised additional concerns regarding the project. Minneapolis, like St. Paul, works to create safer streets for walking as well as bicycling. Portland Avenue in south Minneapolis has buffered bike lanes and recently rebuilt the intersection at 34th Street. This innovative design narrows the pedestrian crossing distance on Portland while allowing the buffered bicycle lane to continue up and over the raised walkway. Enhanced pedestrian crossings like this could help slow traffic and provide safer crosswalks at key intersections on Summit.
Slowing down cars is a high priority everywhere. Last summer Minneapolis implemented a pilot project using cameras to issue speeding tickets. The program coordinator, Ethan Fawley, has said that speeding declines up to 97% when cameras are present.
Minneapolis is a bigger city with a much larger budget. Besides their terrific 89-mile network of off-road trails winding through parks and parkways, around the lakes and along rail-trails, they also have an extensive bike system in the city street grid. Almost 80% of this city system consists of on-street, painted bike lanes. There are 140 miles of bike lanes plus an additional 36 miles of “curb-protected,” above-grade bikeways. Everyday bicyclists must be comfortable on both bike lanes and trails.
While the buffered bike lanes on Summit west of Lexington offer safe cycling, the stretch of Summit from Lexington east to Western Avenue has narrower bike lanes, higher traffic counts and greater need of subsurface repairs. This section of Summit merits a closer look by city officials interested in improving bicycle and pedestrian safety.
There’s one area where St. Paul is way ahead of Minneapolis and every other city in the country. Professor Ernest Sandeen proclaimed in his landmark book on the celebrated street, “Summit Avenue stands as the best-preserved American example of the Victorian monumental residential boulevard.” He explained how Prairie Avenue in Chicago, Euclid Avenue in Cleveland, Fifth Avenue in New York and Park Avenue in Minneapolis were all grand boulevards a century ago. But their stately homes, magnificent churches and leafy parkways succumbed to urban development, decay and commerce leaving little to see of their former grandeur.
In St. Paul this grandeur is alive. Summit Avenue stands alone. And with Minneapolis in mind, most of it should be left alone.
Richard Fred Arey, St. Paul. The writer is author of “Twin Cities Bicycling” and founder of the Saint Paul Classic Bike Tour.
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