Readers Write: Rethinking I-94, Strib election coverage, charter schools

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

•••

In “Rethinking I-94: Ideas vie for funds″ (Sept. 21) we are told one of the plans for remaking the freeway between Minneapolis and St. Paul is a ground-level thoroughfare that might cost many millions of dollars. But wait a minute: Our Streets, which proposes the plan, left out a fact that could mean it costs even more.

We have been told our entire lives that time is money, and now Our Streets officials say “only” a few minutes would be added to drive times. Let’s do the math on that. Depending on whose estimate you look at, as many as 165,000 vehicles pass through this corridor daily. Now if we arbitrarily say a few minutes means perhaps four minutes, let’s see how much time/money will be lost if Our Streets get their way with an Interstate 94 makeover.

Four minutes times 165,000 vehicles means 660,000 lost minutes, or 11,000 lost hours per day. Now extrapolate that out over one year, five years or more. If time is money, we can’t possibly afford the ground-level thoroughfare.

Earl Faulkner Sr., Edina

Reading the Minnesota Star Tribune statement about not endorsing candidates, I was pleased with the new strategy being described (“Endorsing voters in this year’s election,” editorial, Sept. 15). Then I came to the list of issues that, as you say, align with our collective welfare. As I read through the list to the end, my heart sank. I was waiting to see “climate crisis,” and it was not there. I know the editorial said the list was not all-inclusive, but the climate is overarching, underlying, behind and above all the other issues, and a candidate’s relationship to it must be considered in deciding for whom to vote.

We all, and especially our representatives in government, must be constantly holding every decision up against its impact on the environment. I know, I know, people are tired of hearing “climate change,” “save the planet,” etc., and it must be hard to keep writing about it. But you, journalists, have to find new ways to do it, because none of those issues can be decided without considering the context in which it exists. For instance, agriculture: How can farmers be supported to use methods that save the living soil, retain water and carbon and bring back the small rain cycle? Immigration: Lack of food, polluted water and extreme heat all cause conditions unfit for humans, and conflicts are bound to occur with limited resources, so people have to migrate. And so they come to the place that got the benefit from all the resource extraction. Education: Children must be taught to love and take care of their natural world so they will later be responsible toward it. Taxes and the economy: How can we continue adding to the deficit the costs of repairing the damage done by extreme fires, floods, mudslides, rising oceans and destructive winds?

We want to turn up the A/C and close our eyes and ears to it, but we need to elect a government made of stronger stuff whose members will face these realities every time they make a decision, and we voters must select them based on their willingness and ability to do this.

Helen Gilbert, Minneapolis

•••

The Star Tribune let its readers and the whole community down when it stopped endorsing candidates for office.

I take my responsibility as a voter seriously. I’ve tried very hard to determine who the better candidate is for my neighborhood’s seat on the Minneapolis school board, and it’s impossible. Both candidates have nice websites, respectable-looking credentials, say nice-sounding and very similar things about supporting the schools and seem pretty much indistinguishable. I’ve never met either one, and I don’t know anything about either one beyond the material produced by their campaigns.

Presumably one candidate is smarter, better prepared and more reasonable than the other, and presumably an Editorial Board that knows the issues and interviews the candidates could reach a conclusion about which one that is and provide useful advice to the voters. But without that editorial, I’m going to leave that race blank when I vote, or just take a guess and hope I’m not wrong.

If the purpose of your new policy is the fear that an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris would undercut your attempt to grow your readership beyond the Twin Cities metro area, perhaps you could skip a presidential endorsement while continuing to endorse in all the other races.

The job of a newspaper includes endorsing candidates. Please do your job.

Dave Abrams, Minneapolis

•••

Seeming to satisfy its civic duty, the Minnesota Star Tribune issued its voter guide to the 2024 elections (Sept. 20). I found this statement as part of an introduction to the special section in the print edition: “Here’s what you need to know about the candidates ... and the battle for the White House.” I wondered whether the guide would go far enough with critical information about this unusual election.

At the presidential level, the team isolated topics for consideration from the climate to LGBTQ rights. Sadly, it left off the most critical topic: convictions. That category rightfully belongs at the top of the list, but the guide lists no legal troubles for either candidate. Without this, information for voters is incomplete. We are denied a critical element of the presidential contest.

It is often referenced elsewhere, but this missing category must be included. Former President Donald Trump’s record includes conviction on 34 felony counts and being found liable for sexual abuse. Vice President Kamala Harris has no convictions. Oddly, in Trump’s introduction, the writers’ slant features two sensational assassination attempts but omits two historically unprecedented impeachments.

With homage to our democracy (the foundation of this guide), will voters also get a comprehensive view of other national candidates? If this is truly about our elections, the report must clearly state who has accepted and who denies the results of the last presidential election.

Steve Watson, Minneapolis

Thanks for the recent pieces on charter schools in Minnesota. Education is a mighty complex process, and it’s expensive. The writers of the commentary “The experience at our three (successful) charter schools” (Strib Voices, Sept. 24) quote an expenditure of $14,100 per student for their schools compared with the traditional district school rate of $21,700.

Before readers start filling the Star Tribune’s email inbox with protests of how wasteful public schools are, please remember that exclusive private schools in the metro area charge anywhere from $28,000 to $41,000 per year. That’s what wealthy parents think educating their kids is worth. Also remember those schools are called exclusive for a reason, since they decide who to accept by an application process. Public schools, district and charter, accept all children, and have zillions of regulations they must follow, federal and state, regardless of whether those extra services were funded or not.

Add poverty, homelessness and hunger in some families to the mix, and it’s not surprising that not all kids get great test scores.

My children got a great education in the St. Paul Public School system, had athletic and musical opportunities, became certified bilingual and made lifelong friends from multiple ethnic and social backgrounds. As the authors suggested, “Imagine what our scholars could achieve with equal funding”!

Exclamation point mine.

Cheryl Bailey, St. Paul