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Blueprints for Rural Progress: Critical Need for Federal Development Funding
Take away USDA Rural Development dollars and you start taking away small town assets, such as nursing homes, hospital expansions, access to affordable housing, wastewater infrastructure, and business development. Minnesota 2020’s latest report, Blueprints for Rural Progress highlights the importance of these community development programs in sustaining a strong rural way of life. Congress is currently rewriting the farm bill, which includes rural development funding, in a climate of sequester-induced, across-the-board federal budget cuts. Depending on how deep Rural Development cuts are in the next farm bill, Minnesota communities will have a tougher time financing these programs.
Minnesota 2020 Journal: Slow Motion Train Wreck
Even schools have to pay the rent. That’s one lesson from a recent revelation that the Minnesota School of Science owes the Minneapolis Public School $800,000 in back rent. A closer look, however, reveals structural issues about the future of public education and school choice in Minnesota. Without policy change, public education’s life-transforming promise will be compromised and Minnesota will provide kids with something considerably less than a life-transforming education. School buildings carry two price tags. The first is capital investment, the cost of financing and constructing a building. The second is maintenance and upkeep. School buildings represent a significant…
