Readers Write: Speed limits, U regent selection, Israel, State Fair

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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I’d like to thank the Minnesota Star Tribune for running the Associated Press story Aug. 18 about the evolution of national speed limit policies, noting that Minnesota is ahead of the game on speed limit policy reform. The study that led to the so-called 85th percentile rule, which purports that the safest speed limit is the speed that only 15% of drivers exceed over a stretch of road, was conducted entirely on rural highways and never had any relevance to urban street contexts. So, in 2019, the Legislature authorized cities to conduct their own studies and adopt more appropriate local speed limits on city streets. Several Minnesota cities, including Minneapolis, St. Paul, Bloomington, Edina, St. Louis Park and Rochester, have used this authority to set more appropriate speed limits on their own streets. Last year, the Legislature directed Minnesota’s Department of Transportation to immediately apply the reformed national speed limit policies described in the AP story when setting speed limits on state and county roads, and I’m proud to have authored those bills.

State Rep. Steve Elkins, DFL-Bloomington

The Aug. 16 article “Walz ripped for naming donors to U regents” left the impression that there was no consideration beyond campaign contributions in the selection of University of Minnesota Regents.

To the contrary, the Regent Candidate Advisory Council (RCAC) does not take into consideration an applicant’s partisan fundraising or religious background, but rather looks at an applicant’s qualifications and potential contributions to the University of Minnesota as a Regent.

The RCAC was established by an act of the Legislature in 1988 to recruit and screen candidates for positions on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents and make recommendations to the Legislature. The RCAC is composed of 24 highly respected bipartisan members with a variety of backgrounds representing all eight congressional districts.

Unfortunately, the Legislature was not able to reach a decision and appoint regents in 2025, but the governor did select two candidates forwarded by the RCAC to the Legislature. Both will make excellent regents.

Ellen Luger and Kowsar Mohamed were recommended for consideration to the Nominating Joint Legislative Committee by RCAC. Luger was one of the highest rated candidates given her significant background in higher education, professional résumé and her experiences at the local, national and international levels of decisionmaking. As a student regent, Mohamed brings a variety of transformative strategic planning skills within the public and private sectors to the Board of Regents.

The RCAC will continue to work in providing the Legislature with regent nominees of the highest quality to serve the University of Minnesota and the state.

Gregory D. Clausen, Apple Valley

The writer is chair of the Regent Candidate Advisory Council.

As a resident living, working and recreating in Minneapolis, I am particularly disturbed by the city using my taxes to hire and work with an Israeli company that uses artificial intelligence to survey residents in the name of safety. This is the same technology Israel uses to harass, blackmail and control Palestinians.

Israel has been actively engaged in a genocide for 22 months, and in the last few months it is orchestrating a famine that is killing and disabling thousands of people in Gaza.

As a Jew I am particularly disturbed. In a few short weeks we will be observing the high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. During that time, as we account for our sins, we pray in the plural. We acknowledge that we are all interconnected and responsible for and to one another. My safety is connected with my neighbors’ safety – whether here in Minneapolis or in Palestine. Our tradition also teaches us that a human life is sacred — every human life — and it is especially incumbent on us to protect and speak up for those that do not have a voice. I do not want violence, starvation and surveillance done in our name.

Just as Israel uses surveillance to target Palestinians, Zencity has been used to target Black, brown and Indigenous communities and protesters throughout the U.S. I think of what $500,000 could be used for in this city instead of surveillance by an Israeli company. Money that could be used for addressing housing and food insecurity as so many people fall through a safety net that is increasingly fraying.

The Jewish community has been and continues to be faced with a profound moral challenge. We cannot be complicit in the genocide of the Palestinian people. The Minneapolis City Council passed a resolution in support of permanent ceasefire in February 2024 — a moment where I was enormously proud of my City Council, standing up and being on the right side of history. Now is the opportunity for Minneapolis to live into the value set forth in that resolution and take action by cutting the contract with Zencity.

Yes, the Minnesota State Fair has changed over the decades, as Larry Kiewel pointed out in his Aug. 16 Minnesota Star Tribune commentary (“Once an expo of farm progress, the Minnesota State Fair now celebrates consumption”).

His memories of the fair go back decades; mine go back more than three quarters of a century. As a Duluth family, we regularly attended the fair since my early childhood in the 1940s. It was from back then that I have my favorite fair memory.

Strolling with my mother near the Horticulture Building one sunny afternoon in, I believe, 1947, we encountered two men walking toward us on a nearby lawn. My mother, daughter of Swedish immigrants, excitedly recognized one of them, pointing out Minnesota’s then Gov. Luther W. Youngdahl, also of Swedish extraction. She didn’t mention the man walking with the then-governor.

It was Youngdahl’s companion who caught my eye as a 7-year-old whose entire early life up until that point had been spent during World War II. It was Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, still in uniform.

James F. Heffernan, Hermantown, Minn.

I was disappointed with Kiewel’s comments about the State Fair on Aug. 16. They were fine as far as they went perhaps, but totally omitted the inclusion of the Creative Arts Building, the Education Building, the 4-H Building and the Fine Arts Building all located along Snelling Avenue. These buildings are filled with the excellent contributions of Minnesotans of nearly every age. My visits to the fair are almost exclusively to these buildings followed by a stop for a malt outside the Fine Arts Building. These buildings are not about consumerism or consumption; they are about hard work, creativity and inspiration. Kiewel should visit them.