(00:00:00) Hello, this is Gary eichten inviting you to join us each weekday afternoon at 5:30 for Minnesota Journal a half-hour Regional news program that brings you the latest news and much more as well. The centerpiece of the program a nightly cover story that explores a major issue in depth plus commentaries features a regional stock report and the latest weather as well. It's concise easy to find and very informative and we hope you'll join us Minnesota Journal each weekday afternoon at 5:30 deunan over the noon hour today for live coverage of a national Press Club luncheon program. The guest speaker Henry Kaufman. One of the most influential people on Wall Street is interest rate predictions. Make markets rise and fall. He's the chief Economist at the Wall Street firms Salomon brothers, and he can be expected to offer his observations on economic growth the deficit and interest rates at noon today. Henry Kaufman The Wall Street Economist live at the national Press Club at noon as part of midday here on Minnesota Public Radio. This is Morning Edition on ksjn Minneapolis. St. Paul Minneapolis. Mayor Donald Fraser this morning outlined his plans for the city during the coming year in his annual state of the city address for coverage of the speech. We now switch to our Minneapolis Bureau where reporter Dan Olson is standing by. Thank you, Doug Hamilton. Good morning. Everyone mayor Fraser spoke for about 45 minutes. We're going to hear about 40 minutes of his presentation the state of the city address. It was an address delivered at the Lutheran Brotherhood Auditorium in Downtown Minneapolis about a block and a half from City Hall a very handsome Auditorium in attendance were all the members of the city council a good number of heads of departments from the City of Minneapolis as well as officials from other jurisdictions, including the superintendent of schools a number of school board members and several County officials all told perhaps 300 in the audience Mr. Fraser outlined his proposals for the next year as well as citing some achievements and as we mentioned he spoke for about 40 minutes. Here's Minneapolis, Mayor, Don As he spoke about an hour and a half ago in his state of the city address. (00:02:06) Let me make the observation that there's been a change in public attitudes about local government ten years ago a survey of people showed that that local government. Or they should see the federal government was the place to which people turned or solutions to their problems public attitudes of now change so that they believe that it is local government, which is the most effective level and I think given the changing Nature's of priorities and funding that is a realistic appraisal but moreover my own experience now having served at both levels is that the opportunities to be creative are far greater when we're working at the community level than they are when one is working at a more abstract or generalized level such as the state of the nation and this of course is consistent with the tradition that this city is built up in the last decade or two decades really of this pattern of cooperation reflected in the Partnerships between business and the city and labor neighborhoods and all the others who take part. Let me turn now for a moment to some of the Progress that was made last year some of its very visible. We saw the addition of the piper. Jaffray tower that Turner building the Ryan building the office building last year. We added nearly four million square feet of new or renovated office space that is in the sense. We either completed it or ground was broken for its completion by 1987. We've also we've broken ground for the Northwest Center and the Radisson Plaza Hotel. We're close by the completed Embassy Suites hotel and we've seen some exciting plans for additional retail development on the south Nicollet Mall, then I'm sure everyone here has seen the spectacular developments along the riverfront the river place above boy Claire has developed that's going to be followed by a supermarket the joining an expanded Banks. He's got new Housing Programs over there in the cult Marquette site pays for the seen Anthony Main development has begun and now we're beginning to see activity on this side of the river in the mill District the historic Mill district and Just to the south of that the technology quarter is now becoming a reality the city the state and University of completed an agreement to go ahead with the construction of a 11 million dollar supercomputer Institute, which will be the only supercomputer Institute in the United States. They have both architectures available in super computers produced by cray and CDC which are the only two super computer companies in America. We're hopeful and have reason to believe that that is going to Spur significant development in that area down. If we go further south. We see the spectacular changes in Cedar Riverside with a new Radisson Metrodome the new housing the municipal ramps and so on. Honeywell broke ground for a new Research Center up on the North side of the river just opposite the Camden avenue bridge and are more ambitious dreams were thinking maybe that should be thing. I thought of as the North End of the technology quarter and we'll just fill in in between that those three or four miles as we look at the south side of town. We've now filled in the last available sign in Loring Park with 110 Grant Calhoun Square out at the lake and Hennepin was a great success and we've broken ground for the new police first new police station in the City of Minneapolis and 53 years. That's how to 27th and Lake. We think our housing is continued to improve and this year. We will celebrate the fifth anniversary of the McKnight funded Twin City family housing program. When that program was established five years ago certain goals were set to achieve affordable housing for moderate to low-income families. Every one of the target goals were exceeded in the five years that program has been in existence. We'll all of this activity is signaled additional jobs. We had ten thousand three hundred additional jobs in the city last year, which is in one year about a 5% growth in the total Workforce located in the city. We had the very happy circumstances of continued reductions in Street crime and burglaries. Chief also says don't give him any credit so we won't give him any credit, but I'm sure he feels good as the rest of us do that. It's happening on our watches the president by saves, but what's even more noteworthy hovers it despite the decreasing crimes. The number of arrests are going up. And that means increased productivity on the part of the department. You've already heard from the head of the school district. The school enrollment is up and we've kept the twins out of the strikers and maintain the home for the Vikings for whom Hope Springs Eternal. We think in City Hall were making progress in delivering Services more effectively, the two Charter amendments one extending the tenure of the city council will I think give us more stability and productivity and the new executive committee, which was the other charter member we think will help in the administrative side of managing the city government last year. There were several initiatives through our office. There was begun a Labor Management Council, they held a seminar a few months ago. It is composed of representatives from business and labor. The new president of the Chamber of Commerce played a key role in helping us to get that started Gene beer with the telephone company. We organized the first Congress of neighborhoods, which came up with a series of important recommendations, and we've got some new snow programs called snow Monitor and path breaker programs were kind of praying for more snow so we can see if they're going to work. Well, let me turn now to the proposals for the coming year. I want to be clear that this represents one cut at our problems. Every member of the council will have their own priorities the school parks and Library board's of course are devoted to their particular concerns, but from my perspective, these are at least 12 of are more important or urgent needs and you can't quite see them on the screen, but I'll read them to you as you can idea what I'm going to talk about first to create a Youth Development toward second and expand post-high School internships. Third expand net neighborhood employment Network and transitional Industries fourth grade a community employment trust V help single parents become self-sufficient 6 create an independent public housing agency. seventh grade a task force on neighborhood crime Eight obtain State support for the Minnesota Convention Center 9th grade a land bank to facilitate City development 10th combined personnel and Civil Service Administration 11th create a task force on International Exchange in education and finally continue to seek to have a school of the arts and resource center located in the city. You've heard my speech can all leave. I'll just now amplify for a moment or two on the web before I get to these first proposals. Let me make the point that Governor purpose rightfully called attention in his State of the State address to the fact that we have an affluent metropolitan area. And a farm economy in a Range economy in trouble. He might well have added that. We have a similar problem inside the central cities as we watch the visible tangible progress here in our city one has to be aware that this progress is not shared by all about 30% of our neighborhoods are low-income. We're finding that people without without jobs are disproportionately found among you within our minority communities. And particularly we're finding that poverty is a characteristic too often of women struggling to raise their kids by themselves. They may be on welfare. They may be employed. One of the tragedies of employment today is that if you have an entry-level job, and you've got a family you can't make it. So dance, I think the backdrop against which some of the first proposals will be made. Let me say also that I think that the welfare system. I think we have to recognize that the welfare system has contributed to the growth of dependency and changes made by this administration of made the problem worse because they have made it more difficult to start work without forfeiting all of your benefits. And for too many women. That's too big a jump. They are not making enough money. They can't pay the health care the child care as well as the rent and buy the groceries on entry-level wages. And so unless we can allow them to retain some of those wages. We simply lock them in even more tightly than they may have been in the past. Consequences can be seen in the fact that using the federal test for poverty. Nationally. There's been an increase by 30% of the number of children who are defined as living in poverty. Our objective is a city needs to be to create employability and independency so far as that's possible where people are incapacitated for some reason we need to help them when people are out of work but could work. We need to help them too. But not in a passive long-term sense. We need to work with them to work out a plan to enable them to become employed. We don't need a kind of a passive non-interactive system of support that simply leaves people dependent we need to work with them and get them out of welfare and onto the job roles. This is not a new idea. It's an old idea what maybe knew about it is that we are taking this on as a municipal concern we don't have direct responsibility for this is the county State in the federal government, but where are the community where the consequences of policy are reflected in the way people attempt to struggle to meet make ends meet every day. Well now let me then turn to the first proposal, which is that we should have a Youth Development board. Last year superintendent green came to us and said would you put together a group of people to act as sort of advocates for the welfare of young people? And so we created a coordinating Council on youth made up of age youth serving agencies. They have concluded that one of the more urgent needs is to address the problems of teenage pregnancy. but in any event What we're beginning to understand is that we are asking the schools to do too much. We're asking them to take kids who may come from disadvantaged backgrounds and it turned them into full citizens employable and able to fully enjoy life. We're asking them to worry about what happens outside the classroom. We're asking them to worry about the fact that their parents may be working and I think the schools have responded magnificently, but I it is my conviction that we need to help the schools in the Parks and the rest of the community pull our efforts together and make sure we're not leaving some gaps some programs get started out of the mayor's office to help young people some get started by private agencies some get started by public agencies. The question is who watches to make sure that these programs the ones that work continued the ones that don't work get discarded. Who watches to see what's happening to kids tracks and from age zero to 21 who watches to see whether they're being employed when they get out of high school or they're getting into training and that's why I think we need a youth employment board not a Citizens group, but actually a piece of government probably might best be made up of Representatives appointed by the city council and the park and lounges and school and perhaps Library board's but in any event put the responsibility on that board to supplement and to help to coordinate our activities as a community to ensure that we indeed are doing our best for young people. The ruins recent studies longitudinal studies that show that the young people who are at risk who have the benefit of programs like Head Start. You have a much better chance to make it later on. We have Head Start in the city, but we have long waiting list. Of parents seeking to get their kids into the program. There is a committee of beheaded by commissioner Mark Andrew looking at that question of whether we should as a community make a commitment to a much more adequate provision of early childhood education. In order to help those kids at risk make it into school enable them to succeed along with their fellow students. Well, I think a Youth Development board would take that as a responsibility to see if this is a good idea if it is to figure out how to make it work and to stay in place. So it's not subject to the varied funding or changes in political leadership in the city. So that's the basic case for youth employment board. The second proposal is to expand post-high School internships the word expand may be a little misleading to many of you because you may not know that we already have them. We already have them by virtue of an action of the city council last fall to authorize the city as an employer to take on 35 high school graduates who have not been able to locate either in school or training or in the job. We will take them on four-year having worked with the park or lat the parks or the police or the Fire or the Public Works help counsel them educate them about civil service. And if they don't perform well, let them go if they make it through the year and do a good job with they'll have a good work reference. They'll have established some connections and they'll have a better sense of what the world of work is all about. The city council has started this effort. My request today is that the private sector consider joining us we would set as a Target that for every 100 employees that a private sector Enterprise has for every hundred regular employees. They might consider taking on one one year internship which would be available to post to to high school graduates. Now most kids do go on as a bunny indicated they do go on to training they do go on to school or they do get jobs. So the numbers that are needed are not very large, but what we need to hold out to young people is the knowledge that as they move through their eighth and Ninth and tenth grades in the 11th that if they stay in school, there will be a chance to get at least a Year's worth of work experience. It is not a dead end to stay in school. There is light at the end of that particular tunnel. Now we cooperated with I should say the Chamber of Commerce took the lead last year and helping the Art and 11th grade sort of in school summer internship, which has been enormously successful. It's been successful because the kids are worked with are not simply given a job. There's a committee of businessman that meet with them. The counselors are paid to work with these kids through the summer time. These are kids from low-income families. And so far it looks very positive. These kids are doing well and the businesses of liked it. They've seen these kids to be hardworking industrious most of them. So what we're really asking businesses to consider participating in two kinds of internships one and in school internship and one a post high school internship will be back to you to talk further about that at a later time. The third thing is to expand that in transitional Industries. Some of you may have heard references to that. I'm going to take just a moment to explain it a little more today about four years ago a task force headed by Roger hail the CEO of the tenant company studied the problems of hard to employ in the City of Minneapolis. The strategy that they recommended was to divide the city into now eight districts and try to form networks Within These districts provide a focus so that if a company was being asked to help they had a particular area in which to direct their attention and what's happened now is that the way these have worked as we ended up with one lead company working with one lead neighborhood agency to begin that networking process. Let me just run through them and camped in the Camden area. You'll see in the red there. General Mills is working with Pillsbury United Neighborhood Services Alice rainville, and I were just at a luncheon the General Mills put on in the Camden area to The local business what it is. This effort is all about the near North Prudential is the lead firm working with the Urban League and they have Outreach through Central cultural Chicano on the east side the soo line railroad took a very strong leadership and they're working with the East Side neighborhood services in the Philips neighborhood. Honeywell is working with a Philips jobs bank, which is an offshoot of the Phillips neighborhood Improvement Association in the Central Community nor West has taken the lead working with Laureen Nicollet Bethlehem Center, and they're particularly concentrated on educational programs in Powderhorn East First Bank is working with chart which was a program originally aimed at helping women are located sabath and Center. Into other areas, we've identified the lead agency, but we're looking for a lead business one is in Powderhorn West lead agency will be the neighborhood involvement program. But we need a major company to work with them and in Cedar Riverside the agency that who's the Longfellow area out there along the river. The agency will be the Westbank Community Development Corporation. And then whatever business is willing to step forward. We there's one person that kind of helps make this work as name is Mike Brenda. He supported by private funds and continues under the direction of Roger hail. Now, there's a second development that is somewhat related, but it's a little bit different and that is the effort to develop what we call transitional Enterprises or community-based Enterprises to provide assistance for people who are having trouble making it and need a little bit more support. Generally. We hope in their neighborhoods where they can begin to manage some of their problems we can we've identified eight of them that We're working with one is Phillips works and Columbus. They do binary work in light manufacturing that tie which is soo line has helped to start with recycles railroad ties into fuel for electric power generation. Then Control Data is urban East which provides Bindery Services mailing services packing the shrink-wrapping that's right across the street from the stadium then PPL Industries. This is something that Joseph Baggio who's with us today? They helped start they run a business of Salvage assembly pre-sorting packaging hand binding microfilming palette making and then youth Futures which provides courier service and food vending Merc. This is a partnership with the Minneapolis school system. The kids is mostly kids that are dropped out. They work part time at the recycling center. And then they take classes right at that location and very successful Minneapolis education recycling center out near a lake and Fourth Avenue. strange people for energy rehab and produces window warmers Actually, I'm found out what a window warmer is but find out later and then Minnesota youth job development, which is in the salvaging business. I'd like to turn for just a moment to drug describe in a little more detail. One of these Enterprises. It was launched that's Phillips Works. Jim dollop was chairman of the board is here. Jim is a manager for Honeywell 011 of there in the defense system. But anyhow, he working with the community and others have put together Phillips works and their current business. That's what you can't quite see it but that's their key showing Phillips work current businesses. I've already said this binding the light manufacturing the board was formed in 1982 as a result of honeywell's participation in the task force and then working with a Phillips neighborhood organization. It's responsible to the membership of that neighborhood organization and binary operation started in 1982. And in December of 83, one of the community leaders Sheila Hannah took over as general manager and developed a plan for business growth. There's kind of a calendar the development of that particular end. They've added light manufacturing and that began to crowd them. So they not too long ago purchased a new building there now employing 29 people. They see a future of steady growth and they're acquiring new equipment to move into a specialty lens grinding business going to be very specialized with opportunities for significantly higher wages. That's their growth projections. I mean, this is a real Enterprise and what if I had the time I would show you that direct their growth is faster than they had originally planned. They're looking forward and not too long a time to a million dollars a year in sales. If you walk into their shop today, you know what this be misunderstood but you won't find a white face in the workforce is a large proportion of Indian citizens who found jobs there as well as some of our citizens of the black community and others. So that's an illustration of a transitional industry. We hope the business will think about operations that they have a piece of which might be put outside and managed as a kind of a community based Enterprise to help provide these transitional work opportunities to enable people to get into the regular labor force. Phillips has succeeded because it's had the backing of the community with their their know-how and political know-how and and evolvement of the people there and providing the workers. But the the involvement of Honeywell self is absolutely essentially provided a market. They provided managerial help. They provided financial assistance. So it's going to a good partnership. Another one is the net tie all these are some of the pictures there at Philips Net tie represents an effort by the Sioux Line and this new organization to deal with the problem of creosote soaked railroad ties that have to be gotten rid of That's a whole pile of ties this necktie Enterprise collects. These gets them chipped up into small pieces. And then after they're put through the chipper, they're loaded onto seulong cars and taken to Ashland Wisconsin where they're burned for energy production. They have to go to Ashland because it's only there that the temperature is hot enough to consume the creosote. But again, these are provided work opportunities for folks who've not had jobs for a long time. So we solicit your interest in these kinds of transitional community-based Enterprises. They can be real they can be important in the lives of the people who take part. Well, the next proposed has created a community employment trust the city from time to time gets one time pieces of money. Developers repay subsidies or their other forms of payment. What is proposed is to put that into a trust account? Because if it's not a revenue stream, we shouldn't just spend it but to put it into a trust account and to use it to help facilitate some of these neighborhood-based Enterprises and it certain form of Capital Loans or using some of the interest earnings to provide some operating capital in the in some employment. I want to turn to the fifth help single parents become self-sufficient. There are three pieces to this that I want to mention today one is the need for increased funding for child care on a sliding scale fee basis that is very badly needed the Department of Welfare at the state or Department of Human Services. I guess has recognized that I believe the governor will call for an increase, but that's very important to help women get out of the home and into the labor force. The second is the extension of Meade. Mead has been enormously helpful to a lot of small businesses by enabling them to put people to work when they might not otherwise have had the operating Capital to do so in exchange for that. They've agreed to take people who have been unemployed 50% of the meat workers in Minneapolis have been GA eligible general assistance eligible, which means that they're not only unemployed but they've been unemployed for a long time because they're really broke. It's a program that works if the need funding for last year represented one percent of the state's budget. It represents roughly less than 1/10 of 1% of the income of minnesotans. I have some difficulty in the argument that we can't afford it. This is providing work is providing money in people's pockets for groceries and rent and a lot of these people are staying on long-term 70% of the placements have been in the private sector and in most of them have done very well the third piece to this is illustrated by what we call Project self-sufficiency last year had offered us some housing subsidies if we could put a program together to help women to become self-sufficient. We got a hundred such subsidies from HUD. We've got a task force working with them now to help provide the support services. We need to pursue that but we need to recognize is that we shouldn't have had to wait for HUD to provide housing as a piece of an effort to help these women to become self-sufficient. We already own 1500 family housing units in the City of Minneapolis. Located in three housing projects. And so that leads me then to the next proposal which is to create an independent public housing authority. My interest in this isn't just to reduce the vacancy rate or to speed up the turnaround of housing, which has been a big problem with public housing really for quite a long time. My interest is in moving public housing out of the role of Simply being a place to live and instead turning these housing projects into family learning Center's taking the concept of the self-sufficiency project and put it in making it work in these family housing projects. So the public housing be has a positive image people want to move into it because I don't know if they move into it. They're going to get the help to move out again. And if we do that we will make it available to many more people in need and we will help them to become self-sufficient taxpaying wage-earning (00:29:35) citizens. (00:29:37) So that represents a philosophy and a reach that I think is far more than the mechanical administration of 1500 units of housing. It means reaching out and involving counseling and Education and Training and Childcare Services. It means helping the tenants to work through their own problems. It is a more generous Vision. I think that I would ask that the current agency to manage. I think we need a board devoted to those objectives with a policy oriented Management in charge. Proposal and I got 4 minutes and I guarantee I will finish is to create a task force on neighborhood crime. Despite the reduction in crime. We still find some neighborhoods on being impacted too. Heavily. I'm not satisfied. We figured out all of the things we can do to address. This question is are we using our crime data from our computers quickly enough and rapidly enough. Are we using electronic security systems developing those and making them available. Are we can we get the communities more involved in the management of juvenile misconduct, so that that's not left just to the court system. So I would propose that we have a task force to and get some of the neighborhoods which feel particularly Under Siege to help and see what we could we can do. The next proposal is a very important one. That's to get support for the Minnesota Convention Center. We need that not as a community. We needed as a state are. The challenge to us is to sell the state that this is a state project. Not just a city project. It can do a lot for this for the state and for the metropolitan area not the least of which will be to provide an estimated 4,000 additional jobs. If we get the legislative, go ahead we're going to have to do some more planning about the Grant Street area. It's an area with enormous potential and we want to make sure that we fully realize it when you get the written copy this speech you will see other downtown problems referred to Hennepin Avenue, you think the convention center if it's located where its proposed will help a lot and also suggested we ought to have a trolley Car Connection along the riverfront and down Hennepin Avenue to kind of tie some of the pieces over the Central Business area and the Rick into the new areas together and that the next proposal to create a land bank to facilitate City development that's particularly needed in the high-tech quarter. We have one piece of land. It's very attractive. It's likely to be used in a development fairly soon. And then if somebody comes into they want to locate the high tech center aisle with the moment. All we do is tell them go out and see what you can find. We need to have the capacity to acquire and assemble some parcels. So that we can more effectively not only Market the high-tech quarter, but there's more railroad land that coming available. So we need that capacity. The next proposal is to combine personnel and Civil Service Administration. Let me emphasize this would not even once any one bit we cancel the service it would simply pull the administration into one place. It's now divided between the coordinators office and they separate civil service department then 11th create a task force in International Exchange in education. We are one of the major International centers between the two coasts with the only public we have the only public high school in the country which offers both Russian and Chinese we run the largest foreign visitors program between the two coasts with the Humphrey Institute is going to be moving increasingly International activities. We think it's time to take a look at ways in which we can enable citizens of the community to be beneficiaries of this increased level of International Communication conduct and finally We need to locate the Minnesota School of the Arts and resources here in the City of Minneapolis. How are we going to do all this the way we've done everything else. We're going to work together after some you look at these ideas. We took for the console that may throw them out the window, but at least we'll start a discussion. This is a tremendous community in the willingness of everyone to pitch in and help no matter what the problem. Is unique in America and that's what makes me so proud to be mayor of the city. I thank you all for coming today. And I wish you all a very happy new year. Thank you very much. (00:34:04) And you hapless Mayor Don Fraser as he spoke about an hour and a half now almost two hours ago in his state of the city message delivered to an audience of about 200 people at the Lutheran Brotherhood Auditorium in Downtown Minneapolis. Just a block and a half way from City Hall. This is Dan Olsen speaking to you live from the Minneapolis Bureau for Minnesota Public Radio and closing out our tape delay coverage of mirror Fraser's state of the city message. It'll be a message that he'll repeat again over the noon hour in case you want an opportunity to hear it yourself in an abbreviated version and in person you'll be delivering it during the noon hour at the County Government Center. Once again, there'll also be a series of neighborhood meetings scheduled over the next few days for Mary Fraser will visit the Thirteen Ward's of the city and hit many of the points that he talked about in his state of the city message Fraser attached no dollar amounts to the proposals. He made for the Youth board for expended internship programs or for any of the other ideas that he mentioned. He mentioned a total of twelve initiatives for the City of Minneapolis were 1985 five of them directed at jobs and services for young people or single parents that concludes our coverage of the mayor's state of the city address is Dan Olson reporting now back to Doug Hamilton in st. Paul. Thank you, Dan. You're listening to Morning Edition on ksjn am 1330. We now return to national public radio programming from Washington in progress.