Minnetonka is aging. 22% over 65, 35.9% over 55. I am approaching 65 myself, although sometimes it doesn’t feel like it. I have been a nurse for 30+ yrs. Recently I worked for 4 years as a hospice nurse for HCMC and we had many patients in Minnetonka. We took care of my mother in our home the last 3 years of her life as she was experiencing advancing dementia. Minnetonka has many brilliant and resourceful people living and working here. As a city council member I will bring my experience to develop new strategies to support our aging residents. There are also some existing models of programs that integrate programs for seniors and childcare programs. They were never available for us when we needed them , but if there is a demand in Minnetonka I would love to help develop these.
Our healthcare system has some real problems. There are many fantastic points too, it’s not all gloom and doom. Most of us want to age at home, not in a facility with rotating shift workers that come and go with the wind, how can anyone live on the wages they get. This is a growing national issue and Minnetonka already has a strong basis to build on with our programs for seniors. I will make the continued development of our programs and supporting new innovation to improve service and reduce costs. The demographics are perfect for piloting new community programs and will use my contacts at the U of M, HCMC and, Mayo to bring these to our city.
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Hi Douglas,
Thanks for your message, I know it doesn’t help much, but I am sorry that some people don’t tend their dogs and respect other people or the rules. Even before the ordinance changes Dogs were required to on leash on the primary paths. Like so many things it’s the irresponsible and disrespectful people that don’t follow the laws and rules. More signs were ordered and should have been put up yrs ago. The City council and park board had the means to make the signs and post them very strategically. They still have that capacity. It’s difficult to find a good reason for not doing so. I guess the ground will be frozen soon. None of the people I have encountered want a “dog park”. They, we want some open space where we can get fresh air and exercise with our dog, that wants the same thing. My experience and studies show that fenced dog parks lead to more problems for a variety of reasons. I would be happy to share these with you if you like. More signs and more education will help a lot. maybe more areas with more secluded open would help too. Doubtful that more fences will stop problem individuals. $500K+ on fencing and then $???K in police costs will either take away form higher needs in my opinion or raise taxes. There are better options and better ways to treat people and protect or freedoms. Thanks again for your reply!
I just want to offer my opinion of the off-leash ordinance and specifically of my experiences at Purgatory Park. I used to love walking my dog around the maintained part of the path. I always kept her on-leash though because that was the posted rule and I didn’t have adequate recall control of her and also, some people are just scared of dogs and it’s not fair to them to have to be afraid of enjoying the beauty we all enjoy at that park. Occasionally I would pass people walking their dogs off leash on this maintained path and I’d say 80% of the time the other dog minded it’s own business and walked nicely by it’s owner and that was totally fine. The other 20% of the time dogs would run up to my dog and there was no control or recall ability from the other owner. My dog was a herding breed and would snap her jaws at other dogs and as you can imagine this type of gesture wasn’t always taken well. One time a man was walking a Rottweiler and bull-mix off-leash, had no control of them and when the Rottweiler approached my dog it immediately growled at her, unprovoked. I mentioned to the man that this path is on-leash only and he very aggressively and rudely told me to mind my own business (as if his dog growling at my dog wasn’t my business). YOU may have your dog under control and don’t see why YOU should have to walk on-leash but there are enough idiots out there who have no business walking their dogs off-leash anywhere, let alone Purgatory Park, that something more than a park sign was needed. There was obviously a problem there of people treating the whole park like it was a dog park and being completely dismissive of other people’s desire to not have dogs running up to them loose and unattended. It’s not a dog park, it’s a park for all people so changes had to be made to reduce the amount of unwanted or dangerous encounters with dogs there due to irresponsible dog owners.