What is harming Minneapolis most at the present time is City Council members who aren’t qualified to hold their positions and certainly have no understanding of labor contracts and negotiations. Council members have been told repeatedly, and we all know this, that reforms are being addressed and will continue to be addressed by virtue of the consent decree and Effective Law Enforcement for All’s involvement with the MPD. Council members reject evidence of improved relations between the MPD and communities, as shown in recent public hearings on the MPD contract. What has been explained over and over again is that by not having reform or discipline in the MPD contract itself, but rather in the consent decree-settlement agreement, there is more flexibility to implement reforms and change approaches if something isn’t working (”Why I’m voting yes on the proposed police contract,” Opinion Exchange, July 16). If reform or discipline provisions were placed in the MPD contract itself, everyone would have to go back to the union every time an issue came up. If the goal is to have reform and reform quickly, that certainly isn’t the way to go.
We can have a contract, and we can have reform, and these two agreements can exist side-by-side. I urge council members to stop the blather, do their homework and get on board. The council is gaslighting residents of Minneapolis and this just has to stop. Approve the MPD contract and approve it now.
Jacqueline Williams, Minneapolis
Nursing home and assisted living closures like in Arlington, Minn., are a sad state of affairs for the elderly, disabled and staff who worked so hard to keep things going (”Many factors stressing nursing homes,” July 14). Do I think that the Legislature can fix all the issues to make nursing homes and assisted living facilities succeed? Hahaha — no!
Nursing home funding has been a problem for many, many years. Probably close to 50 years ago, I spent time at the Capitol in St. Paul to bring attention to some of problems that have plagued the industry. Low pay, lack of benefits, long hours, exhausting physical work and low reimbursement to the facility were problems back then. What we got was from the Legislature was a continuance of same old, same old. I was determined back then that I wanted to stay working at the nursing home (in Arlington) until I could take care of one politician who did nothing to help us. When I got to retirement age and never saw one politician walk into the nursing home, much less use our services, I decided to say “screw it” and retired. My years working in the industry made me appreciate our residents, though, as they had gone though the Depression years and the era of drought during the 1930s. Their attitude of how they took care of their neighbors and strangers alike was admirable. I learned so much from them! There are rewards to this line of work, but they are hard to reap due to the workload.
