Readers Write: St. Paul child care ballot question, lottery dollars amendment, Angie Craig

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

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I was the city of St. Paul’s child care coordinator in the 1990s. I worked at Ramsey County Human Services as a planner, including work with the county’s child care assistance program. I am also a mother who raised two children in St. Paul, two children who benefited from outstanding child care by an amazing child care provider. I agree with the City Council that this community and our economy cannot flourish if all families cannot find and pay for high-quality child care. But I also agree with Mayor Melvin Carter that the city is not the right entity to deliver funds to families to help them pay for the cost of child care (“St. Paul mayor says he won’t implement child care measure,” Oct. 16).

This election St. Paul voters have a chance to vote yes or no on a proposal to raise property taxes — $2 million in the first year and $20 million a year by year 10. Those funds will serve a small fraction of the children needing child care. And a significant portion of those funds will have to be spent on the administration of the program.

In 2023, Minnesota spent $236.7 million federal and state dollars in the child care assistance programs, which helped 11,540 families pay for child care that year. The state program is administered by the counties — which have eligibility workers, a state mainframe computer system and expertise in verifying income, assets and other eligibility criteria as well as the means to pay child care providers. The city has none of that infrastructure.

The current state investment does not cover all the families who need help paying child care costs so they can stay employed in their children’s youngest years. State legislators have been proposing and considering legislation in recent years to fully fund the state’s child care assistance program. I would ask the St. Paul City Council members, Mayor Carter and voters to put energy and attention in advocating for a significant increase in the state’s investment — an investment that would make a major difference for Minnesota’s economy and for families with children.

St. Paul is a property-tax-poor city because we are home to so many properties that owe no property taxes: colleges, state office buildings and the usual tax-exempt churches and nonprofit properties. The consequence is that the city struggles to do its core work — roads, sidewalks, parks, etc. The city would have to duplicate a delivery system that already exists. That is not a wise use of city funds.

Deborah Schlick, St. Paul

Is the Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund renewal amendment perfect? Perhaps not. But as Mom used to say, “Do we throw the baby out with the bath water?”

Some things to think about:

Do we want to lose this?

Not supporting this amendment on your ballot would be a mistake for Kandiyohi County and Minnesota.

Roger Imdieke, New London, Minn.

The writer is a Kandiyohi County commissioner.

As a longtime police officer, and now leader of the largest public safety association in Minnesota, I am proud to again lend our support and endorsement to U.S. Rep. Angie Craig for re-election to Congress as the representative for Minnesota’s Second Congressional District (“Key concerns for Second District voters,” editorial, Oct. 16).

Craig is a staunch supporter of Minnesota law enforcement.

As a member of Congress, she has secured more than $7 million in direct federal funding to improve public safety and hire more officers across the Second District. She has also written and voted for dozens of pieces of bipartisan legislation to support police officers and their families — with a particular focus on ensuring officers have the equipment they need to do the job, on officer mental health and on retirement benefits.

Earlier this year, following the horrific tragedy in Burnsville, Craig heard from local law enforcement leaders in her district about how federal restrictions were making it hard for local police departments to purchase armored vehicles — like the Bearcat used to save lives in Burnsville. She worked closely with those leaders to introduce the Protect Local Law Enforcement Act to remove those federal restrictions and ensure local police departments could access the resources they need to keep them and their communities safe.

Supporting law enforcement should be a bipartisan issue, and Craig has stood proudly with police and peace officers — even when it means standing against members of her own party.

We urge support for Rep. Angie Craig in her re-election to the U.S. House.

Brian Peters, St. Paul

The writer is executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association.

I’m irritated to action. With the fibs about pet-harvesting in Ohio to those swirling around the recent tragic hurricanes, I couldn’t stop myself from commenting on the pseudo-news charlatans and the algorithm-assisted “influencers.”

I did what any teacher might do: organized my thoughts and categorized the lot into groups.

Consider a delivery truck — full of things packaged in boxes — dumping its contents on a busy highway. (Note: No delivery driver was harmed in this metaphor.) Here’s my perception of how the various influencer-types might react:

The fact-finders/truth-tellers: They wait for a spilled box to be opened and the contents to be analyzed before making a claim regarding what’s in the box and its purpose, based upon the best available evidence.

The underinformed: When a box is opened, they don’t actually know what the thing inside is, but they make a claim about what it is and what it’s used for.

The misinformed: When they examine the object in the box, they know what it is but don’t know why it exists and make a claim anyway.

The last two groups are “chummers” who — excuse the mixed metaphors — are baiting the rhetorical waters with whatever drives their narrative, factual or not.

Chummer 1: Upon seeing the thing in the box, they spew the narrative they want.

Chummer 2: They watch from a distance, never open the box, and tell the story that fits their agenda.

My takeaway: Those who lie for influence, money or power should be called to task, and we should not offer them the power to flip a light switch, let alone drive a message. We veto their power by voting. We vote with our views and clicks and wallets, and we vote with our ballots. So, vote.

And while I’m at it, for those who now use the phrase “word salad” for practically anything the “other side” says, let me “newphrase” a term that fits for those gems, like the lengthy quote from Donald Trump that the Oct. 14 letter writer of “Um, he doesn’t sound so good” gifted us: I consider nonsense like that to be “word slurry.”

Keith Kuhn, St. Michael