Kelly Gaspard (center) with family and friends. Education is No.1

Oldtimers and newcomers wanted to talk about the pace of development. The traffic is terrible, they said, even just through town. They are eager for completion of the rail line and they advocate investment in both roads and mass transit.

Blake Commutes 1 1/2 hours to Burnsville

Developing more and better jobs in the area would keep Elk River and surrounding towns from continuing as bedroom communtieis for the Twin Cities . But some people fear that local competition to offer incentives to prospective new businesses may be defeating one purpose of increased development, that of easing the property tax burden on homeowners. Long-time residents especially are disturbed by the rising property taxes, and we talked to some young people who would like to stay in the area, but fear they can’t afford to. Many people say crime has become commonplace. A retired couple told us their expensive lawn furniture was stolen in the night, and a young couple said their cars were broken into right in their driveway.

Holly Pendergrass and Matthew Salk. Can they afford a house?

We are hearing some familiar refrains everywhere we go. People say they’d pay more taxes if they had more say in how the money was spent. Education is a priority everyone seems to agree on. A unanimous concern is a perceived lack of respect among young people. When we ask why this is happening, many people say because parents are too busy to properly discipline their kids. In Elk River, long commutes contribute to the problem.

Carey Moschau. Enjoying retirement.

People also had good things to say about the rapid pace of development. Some celebrated the new diversity in the population of the old towns, and some like having more conveniences and big stores in the neighborhood.

Ramona Doebler Development is a double-edged sword

One couple said they were giving up on Minnesota They have a toddler and part-time jobs that don’t pay well. In order to get aheard, they’d need help with day care, rent or food, help that has not been forthcoming despite numerous appeals to Sherburne County. So they’re headed for Florida where they hope jobs are plentiful, rent is cheaper and winters, at least, are easier.

Nichole Englund and family. Moving on.

Rev. La Andriamihaja

We spoke to the pastor outside. He knows problems in the neighborhood are deep and intractable, but he wants to start by building bridges with people who should be allies. For instance, Rev. La Andriamihaja is frustrated by the tension and animosity between African-Americans and African immigrants. He’s working with the Council of Churchs an two-way cultural education that would build up both communities.

Adrian Kemp

Adrian Kemp is a parishioner and another community leader. An executive with a telecommunications company downtown, he chooses to stay in the neighborhood and confront directly anything he sees as threatening behavior. He speaks with contempt of sound-bite politicians who show up only for TV cameras. He knows the problems are systemic and acts on his belief that they can’t be solved unless two populations get more hope and more leadership; young people and their fathers, many of whom are incarcerated. So he takes it upon himself to go to schools and prisons and talk to people about how to be proud and aware of the pitfalls of street life. He says poor women are heroic if they can get their African-American sons educated, keep them out of prison and off drugs. He says his mother is a hero.

Then we hit I-94 and drove to Rogers. Was it ever sleepy on the holiday weekend. Lucky for us the antique stores downtown were open, and the women with booths there were in a mood to talk. Kathy Zegar raised her family in Hanover, along this corridor that’s become the definition of urban sprawl. She’s feels the old lifestyle slipping away and wonders if the traffic jams and pace of development will ever let up. The schools and the social infrastructure arent keeping up, and she says she would pay more taxes if that would help. But she hates the new stadium tax and thinks a lot of the new development deals are good for business and bad for people. She’s fed up with politicians.

Kathy Zegar

Across from the railroad tracks, Jeanine Allen was also open for business on the holiday weekend, but we didn’t see any customers at her garden center, and she had plenty of time to talk to us. High gas prices have hurt her and other small businesses, she says. She’s interested in putting wind farms in Rogers, more teachers in schools, building up personal retirement accounts, exploring single-payer solutions to the health insurance crisis and…running for state representative. She says she has voted for Republicans, Democrats, Independents and Greens, but now that her children are grown, she feels obliged to act on her ideas through the political process.

Jeanine Allen

We visited with a private business consultant, a small-business owner, staff and volunteers at a food shelf, errand-runners and people relaxing with friends. It was a beautiful day and, except for the food shelf group, most people we asked thought life was pretty good.

We always seek people’s personal circumstances and concerns before asking about any of the issues on the list Bill Morris made as a guide. On Thursday, some people had to think hard to find something they wish worked better. Here’s what all three of them came up wishing for: Civility, respect, dialogue (ok, so they called it by different names, but it was basically the same thing.) They feel alienated from policy because politicians have made it so acrimonious. Some people also blamed religious fundamentalists for polarizing issues where common ground might be found.

Chris Amundson with friends and Alan in Wayzata

One of those people was Chris Amundson, who’d taken a day off his executive job with a hi-tech company. He was relaxing with out-of-town friends at a Starbucks. When I went up to introduce myself, I thought I was interrupting a meeting. Chris was checking email on his Blackberry, one of his friends was on a cell phone, and the other was on her laptop. But Chris explained they were just hanging out. Then he said he wished people took more time for their friends and more breaks from their fast-paced lives. He was serious. It was funny. Maybe you had to be there.

He is disturbed not just by the accelerated pace of life, but by the expanding population. He solved his commuting problem by moving into one of the new-construction developments that are ubiquitious in the West Metro, but he is also concerned about their toll on the environment.

He described himself as more conservative than liberal, because he feels an erosion of moral values, and thinks conservatives are more mindful of them. But when he said public education was a mess, and we asked him whether he’d pay more taxes if that would improve it, he didn’t hesitate to say yes.

The people at the food shelf reminded us that more than 20 percent of the population of many West Metro communities live in poverty. Annette Poeschel is the director, and spoke from personal experience about the difference a helping hand can make when people are desperate. She is determined that the food shelf not be an enabler of dependence for clients, but a means to self-sufficiency.

Annette Poeschel, Executive Director of the ICA food shelf

The food shelf is administered by the Intercongregational Community Association, so it was interesting to talk with staff and volunteers about engagement through their faith communities, though they all thought government should be doing more to ease the disparity between rich and poor.

Vernon Benson, food shelf volunteer

We spent nearly an hour with Mike Kelly, the charasmatic baker who, with his wife Ruth, owns the Great Harvest franchise on Minnetonka Boulevard. He is proud of his nutritious product, the relationships he’s built with his customers over 10 years, and also of the good jobs he provides to 16 local residents. He pays health insurance costs, despite 25 percent annual increases in costs. He’s worried about his ability to continue , but is optimistic that the issue has become so serious, a change in the health care sytem is imminent.

What the seniors and the couple had in common was concern over crime. It’s serious, and it’s affected their lives. Aubrey Ringdal said an acquainance was beaten nearly to death in Northeast Minneapolis and someone stole flowerpots from her stoop in Spring Lake Park.

Aubrey Ringdal

The young couple said the neighborhood where they’re staying is unsafe, with regular gunfire, even during the day.

They want more police on the streets, and some of them want programs to productively engage young would-be troublemakers. Most people said this is government’s responsibility, but Father Don Schwalm said private charities could and should help too.

Father Don Schwalm

Other seniors testified to the hardship of paying soaring health care costs on fixed incomes. For some it really is a choice between food and necessary drugs.

We also spoke with Mardell Hadley, a stay-at-home mother of young children, who wishes they could participate in more educational and recreational programs. They can’t afford them on one income, but she feels staying home with the kids is worth it because her priority is giving them strong Christian values.

Mardell Hadley

In North Minneapolis we stopped at Sumner library and spoke with a middle-aged African-American woman who had been raised in the projects, but raised her own family in Golden Valley. She looked across the street at the mixed-income new development that had replaced the projects, and wondered whether the immigrants who live there have more advantages than young black families ever did.

Last we spoke with one of those immigrant families, Somalia-born parents of four young children. Abdi Ismail is a bus driver in college to become a nurse: his wife stays home with the kids. They live in subsidized housing, but the waiting list for a three-bedroom voucher is years long, and with just two bedrooms, they are way too crowded.

She is Gina Gono, a 42-year old Ojibwe from Leech Lake. At first, she has few complaints. She says many people are generous and usually give her enough money to keep herself and her friends in vodka; $7.45 a liter. She gestures north, toward a liquor store on Cedar. “What about food?” we ask, and she tells us she eats at St. Stephen’s shelter.

Gina Gono

Soon two of her friends join the conversation, talking about how they watch out for each other in the homeless camp they share. “If I pass out, they’ve got my back,” says Roland Anderson.

Gina tells us she loves her life and also hates it. Loves it because “I’m free.” Hates it because alcohol runs it. We ask what would help. More food, she says, and more sharing from Native Americans who benefit from casinos. On the address line of our consent form, she writes “2525 Cardboard Box.”

We drive down Franklin around Lake of the Isles and Alan is awestruck by the magnificent homes. He hasn’t seen this part of Minneapolis. Dog-walkers and joggers are enjoying the splendid evening. We talk with two of them, Gay Joel and Tom Dobmeyer. They are jogging buddies, mental health professionals in their fifties, and they share many views. They deplore the war in Iraq and worry that funding it comes at the expense of health care and education.

We get to St. Louis Park about 6:30, and now it’s I who am amazed. I haven’t been down this stretch of Excelsior Boulevard in years. Trader Joe’s is there and an attractive four-story condo development so new I can smell the varnish through the open windows as we walk down the street. The lush city park sits just north, and here we interview the first of several content residents. Richard Swenson has a good job with a big firm, and chose to live in St. Louis Park because of all its amenities, especially for people raising kids like he is. He is concerned about the environment, but mostly he is pretty happy with life and work.

Some here tell us they oppose the war, and echo the concerns we’d heard at Lake of the Isles, about inadequate public schools and environmental degradation.

The Illuris

We meet an Indian couple at a gas station, on their way from Hopkins to Uptown for dinner. They’re newlyweds and newcomers. He works in IT for a big company. They’re glad it’s finally summer. They were surprised and pleased to find an Indian community in Minnesota of about 25,000, and they tell us a Hindu temple will open in the Twin Cities in a few weeks. They’re not sure where, but they will find out.

A mile or two west on Excelsior we meet Cindy and Bill Scattergood, a 50-ish couple who’ve come to Miracle Mile to shop at Half-Price Books.

Bill Scattergood is a 35-year employee of a major corporation that underwent a merger a few years ago. He misses the local management and feels torn between his personal values and those imposed by his new bosses. The company makes high-profile charitable contributions but its policies exploit poor people, he says. He is also disturbed by the accelerating pace of life, the isolation people feel from one another and the growing disparity he perceives between haves and have-nots. He puts himself at “the upper end of the have-nots.” He is grateful for the security of his job, but anxious about the world, and working hard on “centering himself,” he says.

The Scattergoods

His wife Cindy tells us she is worried about their younger daughter, 22 years old, working in retail, but unable to make ends meet. She moved to her own apartment three months ago, but called her mother last week because she was hungry and couldn’t afford groceries. Cindy Scattergood said many of her daughters’ friends are still living with their parents because they can’t support themselves. She wonders what will happen to this generation, raised with lots of toys but insufficient skills for coping with the low-wage, sink-or-swim world they’re encountering.

He said student funding is an issue that directly affects his life. “I think that the individual has to take a lot more out of their pocket than they should.” When asked about the solution to this problem, he said he thinks government subsidies and federal loans should help to pay for higher education.

When asked about what he is concerned about with regards to the future, Olson replied, “the English language.”

He said his concerns stem from what he perceives as the erosion of the present mainstream middle-class stability through a rapidly changing work and social environment that might eventually lead to job and pension loss.

While she said she was satisfied with Minneapolis public school for her children, she felt that one of her sons who has special needs was not receiving adequate attention so she enrolled him in a private charter school.

She has lived in South Minneapolis for 15 years and said she is concerned with violence among the younger children in her neighborhood. She would like to see something positive being done for them.

She said she thinks one solution may be to offer some sort of summer employment for young people. She said when she was growing up in Iowa, such programs existed providing summertime employment for young people and keeping them off the streets.

Moore said she would like to see more religious freedom in America, especially for Christians.

“Stop taking God out of this country, because I believe God will withdraw His hands, and I don’t know what’s going to happen, I’m afraid.”

She said she resents receiving emails at work about gay pride because she doesn’t believe in it. “I want to be able to say, it’s in the bible, it’s condemnation, it’s not right. But I don’t feel like I’m free enough to say that on the job.”

He believes government impacts people’s lives in many ways but that government is essentially corrupt and burdened by red tape.

He said government is most in need of reform in healthcare and social security. He said by the time he retires, social security will be practically non-existent.

He said he regularly contacts his congressman over a number of different issues, usually when he is angry over a certain issue, such as potholes in the road.

Jamieson on the need for reform in healthcare.