The Vision for Crookston condensed

I have a vision for Crookston and have been actively pursuing it. I believe we can do this with faith not fear.  My vision is for Crookston has seven parts:

1.  First do no harm, keep Crookston beautiful and recycle older buildings.

2.  Keep Crookston quiet and peaceful. Slow down traffic and see the store windows through diagonal parking and two-way traffic

3.  Encourage small businesses through incentives, bring tax dollars back into Crookston (Just passed: our State now offers historic tax credits! as well as the federal government. Thanks to Bonnie McDonald and the MN Preservation Alliance.)

4.  Bring people downtown through affordable housing, increasing events and UMC involvement.

5.  Our kids:  create the best schools ever

6.  Encourage Arts and Culture through a regional approach, advertise our low rents to artists in Grand Forks, Fargo,and the Twin Cities.

7.  Timeliness, Transparency and Democracy in government:  Extensive partnering.  Create meaningful work through  “C-bucks” trade dollars which will also create conversations across all income groups.

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Part 6 of my vision for Crookston

I’m sorry to be so slow getting this out to you, do you remember the other five parts? They are: Part I, Slow down, make it beautiful, and peaceful, Part II Address Parking once and for all, Part III antiques, collectibles, thrifts make a great destination, Part IV Bring people downtown through affordable rental housing, events and UMC, Part V create the best schools ever and after attending a recent 'strategic planning' session, I must say our goals must be much much higher, why not a magnet school for math, science, and engineering? or fine arts? or the highest GPA sports students ever?

Finally here is Part VI: Everybody talks to each other and everybody has meaningful work. Ok, I know, that’s two goals in one. Think though, if everyone talks to everyone else either by the Crookston Daily Times Guestbook, or email, or on the phone or in person, everyone would indeed have meaningful work because of our relationships with others, talking about our problems, and working together to solve them. And I must make one qualifying statement, and that is, we speak to each other while keeping our best manners, and our most open mind. Using our minds to concentrate and really listen. To respect all races, all income levels, and to take the time to have those conversations. Believe me I know its easy to say and tough to do, and sometimes when I try, I get slapped in the face, but oh well, its not the end of the world or anything.

And since I have only found part time work so far, I have spent my time thinking about Crookston and writing grant applications. Plus I’m an introvert, not a talker really. I should have gotten out and about and talked with as many people as I could. Surely there is someone somewhere who could put me to work full time in and around Crookston. Many times I thought to myself “I have no skills! Stupid Bachelor’s degree in marketing means nothing! The American Dream is dead! How will I pay the next bill!? But the Lord has provided and people in Crookston have been kind.

And so we must all continue to be kind, fair, and hopeful for Crookston. 50% are on the federal free school lunch program and I suspect the rate is higher than that, 18% Hispanic population, lots of homelessness, people on disability, and those that are trying to help them. But it takes a village to raise a child, a village to start a business, and a village to communicate with parents, teachers, community leaders, those doing the laundry for the hospital, and the hospital executive director. The leaders and the followers, the sports people and the arts people, the farm kids and the town kids, the poor kids and those from families more well off. I’ve found over the years that if you talk long enough, you will find something to connect you to the other person and then fear goes away, and new opportunities arise.

One thing we could do right away is add a “Time Dollars program” to our community. Imagine the young helping the elderly for time-dollars that they can go spend to obtain other services that they need. A person called “mmaps” on the Crookston Times Guestbook said that Crookston has a service base, not a retail base, and that’s true, so why not capitalize on it, and if the retail sector can afford it, they could join in and redeem time dollars as well! Imagine it! The homeless helping the poor non-profits with their works, and proving their worthiness to hire, the smarter kids helping those that need tutoring, parents helping teachers, teachers helping parents, people could apprentice again if paid in time dollars, not real dollars, kids could get some useful skills instead of one shop class in their whole life. Instead of a strings tied government program, we could help ourselves with our own teams of "Youthbuild" or "Self Help Housing" the list could go on and on. But it only works with frequent respectful communication.

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Part V of My Vision for Crookston starts with comment from Patsy

Patsy said: "I've realized recently that Crookston is really a paper tiger in that people are generally poor and have little money to spend even for the most basic necessities. Those conditions lead to a clear division between the haves or popular in town and the have nots. I see it more and more in the community, more division both economic and in status connected social circles. The new hockey arena, quite truthfully, scares me in that if we, or the leaders, have guessed wrong about what we really need to substain us instead of what we may need just to survive, then Crookston is pretty much finished or the best days have already passed before us. The stats, trends, and local leadership, who seems to be caught in a 1950's-60's time warp, make Crookston's future linked to the aged, middle aged and elderly. Certainly not to a up and coming youth movement. Kay, am I on something or onto something?"

Patsy, Your comment/question needs to be out there on the front page of my blog, not hidden in the comments. I believe that all government is a “paper tiger,” in that it seems all powerful, but that is only because of our fear and/or lack of knowledge of how it works. When we have no fear, we can make change happen. It saddens me to quote that the “poor are always with us,” and the division you talk about is everywhere you go and yes, the division between the “haves” and the “have nots” seems to be widening everywhere, not only here in Crookston, where ½ of us make less than $34,609 (2000 census) per household, and 12.4% of individuals are living at or below Federal poverty level of $10,830 yearly income. A better income judge is the number of kids on free or reduced school lunches. Last time I checked it was over 50%.

I read an article a few years back that is even truer today than when it was written. This report finds that the richest could have given billions more in 2000 and I suspect that it holds true today.

“According to a new report from NewTithing Group, "http://www.newtithing.org, a nonprofit donor education and research organization, the nation's wealthiest four hundred taxpayers could have donated billions more than they did in 2000 without sacrificing their lifestyles.

Data provided by the Internal Revenue Service revealed that taxpayers with the highest reported incomes in 2000 made an average of $174 million and donated, on average, $25.3 million, for a total of $10.1 billion, or 6.9 per cent of the $146 billion in charitable donations that Americans declared on their tax returns. According to the report, however, the same group of individuals could have comfortably given nearly one-and-a-half times that amount, representing an aggregate increase of more than $4 billion, without compromising their financial well-being.

"Charities and social services face severe long-term funding cuts in one of the worst fiscal crises for states in fifty years," said NewTithing founder and Chairman Claude Rosenberg. "An additional $19 billion could have kept open fifty homeless shelters that have been closed in fifteen Midwestern states in the last year alone; help schools and the underprivileged in California, which is struggling to decide which services to cut, including in higher education; [and] improve the quality of life in Massachusetts, where social services could decline after another round of budget cuts....[W]wealthy tax filers -- and certainly the wealthiest four hundred -- can come to the nation's rescue by donating the maximum they can comfortably afford to those charities that can provide a solid social return on investment."

"Wealthiest 400 Could Comfortably Afford to Give Billions More." NewTithing Group Press Release 1/01/04.

Indeed, the best days have already passed before us in the 50’s and 60’s, and that is everywhere as well. The problem that no one wants to address is “What do we want Crookston to be like when our kids have kids?” And they are having kids now and working two to four jobs and paying one or two child support payments. And the reason no one wants to take on that question is that it is a much more risky question to answer than dealing with the risk of future costs of the hockey arena.

Unfortunately, the economic dichotomy will all even out as the baby boomers age and decline in health and find that those with wiped out retirement funds end up in the same situation as those that had none in the first place. Lots of people give me a funny look when I say, the cliché, “You can’t take it with you.” Not the aging, the tight-fisted, or the fearful, but the youth and their creativity are the key to re-inventing Crookston. And that leads to me to say that Part V of “My Vision for Crookston,” is to offer the best schools ever in Crookston and we will draw more people to come and live and stay and open shops and do things than ever before in this “our bedroom community.”

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