The Minneapolis City Council has managed to save four of ten firefighter positions that were slated for layoffs; that’s a good thing, though surely it would be nice to be able to keep all those positions.
In unrelated news, the City Council also approved a bicycle/pedestrian coordinator position, which is funded by combining the budgets of several part time Public Works positions into one. This is also a good thing, helping Minneapolis keep the momentum toward a complete streets future and improving safety and convenience.
I say unrelated, because really, they are; different budgets, different issues, even if they’re in the same city. But the Star Tribune has been insisting on linking them every chance it gets.
I’m not sure why the Star Tribune has made this such a big story. Maybe someone at the Strib has a beef against bikes; maybe they’re trying to “balance” the generally bicycle-positive coverage they’ve had in the past; maybe they just don’t understand the city budgeting process and have fallen victim to the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy; or maybe they just like the stupid, vitriolic, mean-spirited comments this sort of story generates (God, why do I even look at the Strib comments on stories like this? They make me weep for my fellow Minnesotans, until I remember that they’re the opinions of a very isolated and poorly socialized minority and go out into the sunshine where the normal people live).
I suppose this juxtaposition is “newsworthy” because it highlights the decisions that all of us–families, businesses, cities, countries–have to make about the urgent and the important. When times are tough, budgets are tight, angry voices are loud, it’s easier to focus on the urgent–fires are the classic example–and ignore the important. We’ve been ignoring a lot of important things lately, like infrastructure maintenance (hello, potholes!). But that’s not necessarily the right balance to strike: the only valuable thing I ever got out of a Steven Covey seminar was the urgent/important matrix: we need to be spending more time in that upper right corner.
In any case, I’m glad the bike coordinator position is going forward, and I hope that some solution to all of the problems around staffing the fire department–pensions, labor issues, etc.–get ironed out.
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