Photos By John HoffNo, don't blame my friend Dave Arbit of CPED. He wasn't at the Hawthorne Annual Meeting, where somebody sidled up to me (this happens a lot) spoke in a quiet tone of voice, and started spilling useful nuggets of information...
In the past, I have griped VERY SPECIFICALLY about how city and county data regarding property ownership is cumbersome for citizens to use and provides maddeningly incomplete data. My main beef: ordinary citizens can't search these databases using something like a surname to find out, for example, how many properties a particular slumlord owns. You can't use a term like "Savage" to pull up Minneapolis property owned by individuals in Savage, Minnesota. There's all kinds of useful stuff you can't do with this cumbersome data base.
According to this source--who I will nickname "Municipal Diamond"--there is indeed a city database accessible to city employees which allows the user to instantly pull up stuff like the number and nature of 911 calls to a particular property. It also allows the user to search using the name of a property owner as a search term.
So here we are in North Minneapolis...fighting a battle to turn our neighborhoods around...and we can't get access to a useful database to figure out which slumlord, which small fry mortgage fraudster, which Level 3 Sex Offender, which felon drug dealer owns what properties. If we knew the freaking address already, we wouldn't need to look it up, NOW WOULD WE?
Somebody who might want to--oh, gee!--move to North Minneapolis has no adequate way to research a particular property to find out how many 911 calls were made to the crappy-looking house next door in the last month.
So what should you do? Maybe just go with your "feelings" about how quiet and safe the block seems during a brief visit?
It is frustrating. INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE.
Oh, yes, by way of explanation: Top photo, FRUSTRATED citizen who can't get the information he needs. Below, modest reform to city database brings about HAPPY citizen.
(Yeah, actually it's my son while we were house-sitting at Peter Teachout's residence a few months back, but same difference)
2 comments:
Yes, INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE.
But so too, do the COOKIEs:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/pasa/blog/2008/04/cookie_liberation_front.php
John, why do you not have a Twitter account? Or do you? I (and I am sure tens of others) want live updates of your neighborhood vigilantism!
Ah, Graham. Nice to see you!
Here is a link so folks can see even more of you.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0ujdCZ0qPw
In regard to Twitter...I've thought about it but I haven't yet taken that leap. Constantly broadcasting my location may not be the best tactical move, if ya know what I mean. Can Twitter be restricted to a select group, or would I be telling the whole world my current location? You'll have to explain it to me, Graham-ster.
Hmmmm. Your name is kind of like a cookie. Or is it a cracker? I've never understood why Graham CRACKERS aren't called Graham COOKIES.
Hmmmm. (Chewing sounds) Yes. An existential mystery for the philosopher-revolutionary to contemplate. (Dunking sounds) Um, yes.
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