I find it deplorable that the mayor and City Council have approved $500,000 for the installation of 10 artistic water fountains when we clearly do not have enough police to keep the city safe and many of our roads and other infrastructure are in poor condition.
How many more police could we have on our streets for that $500,000? I would personally prefer the romance of safety and security.
SUSAN PETERS, MINNEAPOLIS
Given the choice between a beautiful place and a place with the most cops, which would you choose?
Of course, choosing beauty should not be either/or. In fact, making the place you live more beautiful is a strategy for fighting crime and neighborhood decline. More people are attracted to aesthetically pleasing spaces, and with more people come greater safety. (Note the gang banger types started to congregate around the soulless City Center, not Peavey Plaza next to Orchestra Hall.)
When you travel to other places, what delights you and makes you want to return?
When you take a picture on your trip, it's not of the police — unless they are wearing oddball uniforms or the tour guide tells you not to take their picture.
Our auto-scaled cities, electronic door-locked commutes, prepackaged culture and big box branded commerce have desensitized us to the small detail, the grace note, the accident, the gifts left by strangers long dead, who wasted their money on beauty instead of centurions. They, too, are investments in community infrastructure.
But to answer Susan Peters, Mayor Rybak's budget for 2007 did include $3.4 million for 43 additional police officers. I don't know what the recurring costs will be after they are recruited, vetted, equipped, trained and paid salary and benefits, but for the first year, that's $79,000 per officer.
The fountains come out to $2,000 a year each, over 25 years, and if Rybak's plan to sign up more suburban cities for Minneapolis water adds just St. Louis Park or Eden Prairie (both have nasty drinking water), it'll all come out in the wash.
