Hi all -
Wanted to get you an update on what has been happening since the Shakopee Diversity Summit. Those who signed up for the Diversity Task Force have been meeting the past month and have renamed the group to the Shakopee Diversity Alliance and created their vision:
The Shakopee Diversity Alliance’s vision is that through collaboration and awareness, Shakopee is united as a vibrant, diverse, inclusive community.
Their top three goals are:
Good evening -
There have been reports the last week about heroin in Shakopee. Heroin is a drug that is not only a Shakopee problem but has very quickly come up metro-wide. I spoke with Police Chief Jeff Tate he says changes have been made in the manufacturing of prescription drugs that make them difficult to smoke. Consequently, heroin has come on the scene as a cheap alternative. The Metro has heroin of very high purity that is extremely addictive. Here is what we’re doing:
It sounds simple, but please talk to your kids about drugs and pay attention to what is going on in their lives. We don’t want more heartbreaking stories of youth burglarizing and star athletes stealing from family.
If you or a family member needs to find help or talk to someone call 1.800.662.HELP (4357) or click here for the National Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
More info on heroin or drug abuse.
Thank you!
Brad
Good evening -
Tonight was a great Shakopee City Council meeting with some wonderful, passionate discussions. Can’t believe I get excited over these things…who knew?!
Here’s what we accomplished together:
Shakopee residents have been really good to me. The vast majority of the calls and emails that I get are about important issues and not frivolous (read=annoying) things.
By far, the single issue I get the most emails about is the train and how it blows the horn all the way through town some nights. It is frustrating and makes a lot of people angry. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do about it.
Shakopee has a long history with the trains coming through town. They bring a lot of jobs to our town and the benefits far outweigh the problems. However, some of the engineers tend to be a bit overzealous with their horn blowing. Unfortunately, we are stuck.
The train must blow it’s horn at every uncontrolled road crossing for safety – typically it should be two short and one long. Now, it seems like the solution would be simple – put crossing bars on each road crossing. That would be a city expense and cost well over a million dollars but the cost isn’t the biggest problem. If we put in all of the crossing bars, the trains would not have to slow down when coming into Shakopee and could buzz through town at high speeds. These high speeds would create an unsafe situation as well as the shaking resulting from high speeds could damage buildings and infrastructure. It is not a good situation.
Those saying, “Well, they live by a train. Deal with it.” aren’t taking in the entire context. Recently the tracks were upgraded through town allowing more, bigger trains each day. We have significantly more trains going through Shakopee now than just a few years ago. I also get a lot of feedback that the horns are blowing a lot more through town than they used to.
Councillor Matt Lehman is the liaison and representative for the city with the Train Safety Committee. Please let him know of your concerns and questions about the trains in Shakopee. He lives not far from the tracks and has some of the best understanding of the issues we face as a city with high-volume tracks running through the heart of our town.
-Brad
Good evening all -
The past 8 days, Shakopee City Council has passed business incentives to create 230 new, good-paying jobs here in Shakopee within 24 months of completion (added for clarification 5/2/2012)! That is an amazing statistic of which I am very proud. These jobs were created with the help of Scott County and the Shakopee School Board. Here’s the lowdown:
This is phenomenal news for the city of Shakopee and a credit to our hard-working city staff headed up by City Administrator Mark McNeill and Mr. Michael Leek in the Planning Department, past Mayors John Schmitt and Bill Mars both set the stage for these projects and the Shakopee Chamber of Commerce.
Word is beginning to get out that Shakopee is focused on Economic Development and leads are coming in for more projects to hopefully break ground in Shakopee.
KSTP Story from 5/2/2012
In other items tonight, we:
Lastly, we adopted 12 priorities for Shakopee over the next 12 to 18 months. We held a goal setting session over two nights and here are our highest priority items.
Some of these items are overall goals and some are specific. This will be an evolving list and we have already begun to tackle some of the items. We’ll keep you posted.
As always, let me know your thoughts.
Have a great night!
Brad
© 2012 Moving Shakopee Forward. All Rights Reserved.
Powered by WordPress. Designed by 