Rank your ballot in St. Paul

St. Paul neighbors, get ready to rank your ballot on Nov. 7. St. Paul held its first ranked voting election in 2011, and many of us have become familiar with this user-friendly way of voting.

For first-time city voters, it’s easy — just rank your city council candidates in order of preference: first choice, second, etc. If a candidate receives a majority (50% + 1) of first-choices, that candidate wins. If not, then an “instant runoff” occurs. The candidate with the fewest votes is defeated, and these ballots now count toward those voters’ second choices. This continues until one candidate reaches a majority and wins.

Under ranked voting, we’ve seen turnout increase and the council become more diverse in reflecting the communities it serves. It’s not just cost-effective (eliminating costly, low-turnout primaries), it’s more inclusive, civil and representative. Join me in ranking your ballot on Nov. 7 and celebrating St. Paul as a democracy leader.

Maybe next year we can get the School Board to have ranked choice elections too.

Ellen T Brown, St. Paul

A loony plan

I drove down Summit Ave on a beautiful golden autumn day, Sunday the 29th of October, 3 o’clock p.m.  The sun was shining, the colors in full glory. In the two-and-a-half miles I saw two bicycle riders. A perfectly beautiful fall day with trees singing with color. Too bad a lot of them are doomed.

For 20 years I drove to work going down Summit to Dale. In the summer I would see maybe seven or so bikers, this was at prime rush hour time. In the winter, two.

The plan to retrofit Summit to accommodate bikers is loony. We already have dedicated bike lanes on Summit. Let’s stop this crazy plan and put the money into street maintenance.

Tom Bates, St. Paul

Riders, a small minority

Who made the decision that the Twin Cities should be the cycling capital of the state, if not the country? Why are four-lane streets being turned into two lanes with a path for cyclists in a state where people who ride bikes are a small minority of the population and where people can realistically ride, at most, six months out of 12, if not only five? As a motorist, I am tired of cars taking a back seat to cyclists.

Bob Hart, St. Paul

St. Paul’s Yellowstone

Having lived in the metro for 60 years and having toured Summit Avenue scores of times, often just to make myself feel better about the world because it was always such a peaceful place, I cannot understand why the city/met councils would want to turn St. Paul’s Yellowstone into a bicycle Disneyland.

Carl Schmidt, Hawkins, Wis.

Choice: Pay more or pay more

Xcel Energy will begin assessing higher rates for peak energy usage, thus the reason Xcel Energy has decided to upgrade electric meters to something called a “smart meter,” that will communicate in real time with their home office.  With this, Xcel can determine how much energy homeowners are using at every minute, and charge accordingly.

There is an “opt out” provision, however, if you, as a homeowner elects to “opt out” of this new smart meter program, Xcel will still replace your electric meter with what they call a non-communicating meter (the same meter as most have now), but charge $15 per month for an employee to read the meter, the same as they do now at no charge. So, you will either pay considerably more with the smart meter or pay at a minimum $15 more per month for your electric service.

Mike Miller, St. Paul

Some students can use phones

The question presented by the guest editorial, “Schools should ban cell phones,” assumes that students abuse them. And I am sure they do. But abuse of a cellphone in school or anywhere is an expression of the heart’s intent.

In the classes I teach, American Government — Contemporary Issues — to home-school high schoolers, I have always allowed them to use their phones, tablets or laptops during class. I love it when they find something and challenge me on the spot, or seek out some tangential information on a subject, during class.

There is one condition, though. They cannot be used for anything other than class work. It’s amazing how well that works with students whose moral compass compels them to choose right.

Dave Racer, Woodbury

Early builders

Wednesday was the 182nd anniversary of when the first parish priest of Minnesota, the young French immigrant, Father Lucien Galtier, consecrated the little log chapel of Saint Paul and recommended that the congregation aptly name their rising settlement in the wilderness, “Saint Paul,” which they fatefully did.

All the materials and labor that went into the construction of the “twenty-five feet long, eight feet wide and ten feet tall” (with the roof extending it “five feet higher”) oak log chapel were produced by the congregation – mainly the “eighteen families” of humble French Canadians, whose “shanties” were scattered from Pig’s Eye Lake to present-day Eagle Street. They all had settled along the great river bend less than three years after the Mdewakanton Dakota willingly sold all the land between the Mississippi and St. Croix Rivers for $1 million, in the September 1837 Treaty. Two of those French Canadians, the “good quit farmers,” Ben Gervais and Vetal Guerin, donated the grounds for the chapel – a strip along the edge of the bluff, between present-day Minnesota and Cedar Streets.

Once finished, the Catholic chapel of Saint Paul overlooking the river instantly became the central landmark and most identifiable building in the new village. The plain and poor French Canadians who built the chapel – and the ones who had earlier petitioned Father Galtier, whose home parish was upriver in Mendota (St. Peter’s), to erect another church downriver – were the unsung founders of the village that grew into the great City of Saint Paul.

Every citizen of Saint Paul should honor the work of those humble pioneers, who, sadly, too many people today have completely forgotten.

Gary Brueggemann, St. Paul

Put American ingenuity to work on our guns-in-the-wrong-hands problem

Maine is my home, even though our physical residence is not there right now. Lewiston hit home.

As intelligent humans we have solved many, many problems over the years and developed technologies that allowed us to land on the moon with computers that were no better than the computational ability of our current cell phones. As Americans, we have amazing abilities when we put our mind to a problem, and I have no doubt that if we could deal with the divisive issue of guns, mental health and our concepts of rights and freedom we could solve the unique American problem of mass random killings by firearms.

However, we continue to demonstrate, over and over again, the definition of insanity with this problem by doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result. That IS insanity.

The gun rights we have in the United States are a long-standing part of our culture and history, but we have failed to manage that right with the many rights that have been taken away from us when a person’s right to carry very efficient killing weapons gets into the wrong hands — of people who should not have them. It is not too hard to imagine that someone who is incapable of making sane decisions would feel emboldened by the fact that they could legally purchase a weapon that was specifically designed to kill people efficiently and go out and carry out their insane deeds.

I have heard all the arguments about how these weapons are no different from other semi-automatic weapons that we have had for a long time, but frankly, this is a bogus and wrong talking point that needs to stop.

As a unit commander in the U.S. Army at the time, I was responsible for converting our unit from M-14s (the previous version of the Army’s semi-automatic rifle) to the M-16. Why did we do that??  Because even though both weapons were effective semi-automatic weapons, the M-16 was designed to be a much more effective killer. Smaller rounds, faster muzzle velocity, lighter weight, better recoil protection, all these things made it a very efficient weapon for the job we had in the U.S. military.

We need to get beyond our divisive extreme positions on how to handle these situations and use our American Ingenuity to address and deal with this problem as we move forward. We can’t do this if we continue to think that any discussion about how to handle gun rights or rights of the mentally ill will limit individuals to enjoy these rights when they are responsibly exercised.

There is a solution to this problem that would allow us to regain the rights of living in a safe and unafraid environment while maintaining the cultural rights of gun ownership that have been part of our history. However, in order realize that solution, we need to sit down and do what we do best — analyze the complex problem of what is allowing people with the intent to kill as many random people as possible to gain access to efficient killing weapons and accomplish their deeds. No subjects should be off the table or taboo in this analysis. It’s like putting together a very difficult puzzle, but as Americans we have demonstrated we can do this over and over again on subjects that are not strangled by intractable divisive and politicized positions that prevent us from solving them.

There would be a heartfelt sigh of relief from the entire population of the United States if we saw a group of widely different ideological Americans take on this job. No more divisive talking points or irrational thoughtless solutions but real American Ingenuity put to a difficult task. True Americanism at its best.

Mike Willey, Oakland, Maine, and  St. Paul

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