Readers Write: Housing, energy, burnout, race and the Rochester video

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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In response to cities’ opposition to fixing the housing shortage, cities say that they have individual needs and should continue to have the ability to set whatever zoning rules they want (“Minnesota cities to legislators: Don’t tell us how to fix the housing shortage,” StarTribune.com, May 6). That they don’t need “one size fits all” solutions for zoning from the Legislature, which already sets a statewide building code. This would make sense … if cities were actually forming unique solutions or allowing new homes. But as the Star Tribune covered in the 2021 piece “How Twin Cities housing rules keep the metro segregated,” metro cities already have the same singular solution to the need for homes — saying “no.”

Seventy-five percent, often more, of most cities are single, detached homes only. This prevents duplexes, triplexes and more homes. Allowing more homes per lot is a solution proposed by “Yes to Homes,” rejected by cities. Many homes are required to have yards that are four to five times larger than the home. This prevents lot splits, selling some land to a new neighbor for their home. Allowing homes on smaller lots, one-eighth of an acre instead of the commonly required half acre, is a solution proposed by “Yes to Homes,” rejected by cities.

Cities can always do more than the state requires to allow new homes, but inaction must no longer be an option. A baseline on zoning, like the baseline on building code, will create clarity about what is allowed statewide and allow new homes to be built. It’s time for cities to stop blocking the new homes we desperately need.

Brit Anbacht, Minneapolis

Minnesota founded the nation’s first-ever community solar garden program with the aim of providing access to solar energy for everyone. We’ve come a long way since it started, both as an industry and in terms of policy. Also, given the expected growth of data centers, artificial intelligence and electric vehicle charging, we will need ever-greater energy production sources. Which is why the decision by Minnesota legislators to propose ending the program is puzzling.

Apadana Energy is committed to delivering renewable energy solutions to both lower customer electricity bills and benefit the environment. Ending Minnesota’s successful community solar garden program is in direct conflict with current and future energy demand, environmental needs and our company mission.

Apadana is a model small business, started 12 years ago by two immigrant engineers, now employing 80 staff. Coincidentally, Apadana was created the same year as the community solar garden program. By sunsetting this program, our business would take a direct hit. It will lead to a reduction in our workforce and a certain negative impact on Minnesota communities. It would also give more control to utilities, further reducing options for households to lower their energy bills.

The law today helps our communities and is already serving 30,000 Minnesotans. Most recent updates to this law were only implemented two years ago. We therefore need to give the new program more time to realize the optimal potential. It seems shortsighted, and poor fiscal management, to end a highly successful program that just received an overhaul.

Lev Buslovich, New Hope

The writer is president of Apadana Energy.

I don’t understand. I really appreciated the Energy Star rating system that the Republican Party is going to unceremoniously just cut (“EPA plans to cut Energy Star appliance efficiency rating system,” May 7). Snip, gone. I, like a lot of people, geeked out wandering through showrooms comparing the ratings, costs and all that on stoves, refrigerators, washers, dryers and anything else. And I believe I got a tax break on a refrigerator we bought thanks to Energy Star.

What I don’t understand is why the Republican Party is so disdainful of, and even hostile toward, any plan, product or person involved with trying to create a more energy efficient world. No one can deny that anytime anyone turns on anything that is not powered by solar, wind or another energy source that creates no waste, we kick it all down the road and make the lives of our children, grandchildren and generations to come live in a dirtier, more toxic, volatile and crazy-expensive world. Shouldn’t this be more like a moonshot thing where we come together as a nation and get it done for them? Are we still a nation?

Luke Soiseth, Lake St. Croix Beach

As a primary care physician nearing retirement, the article “Burnout is causing exodus of doctors” (May 7) resonates with what so many of us have experienced. As medical students, we were taught not to blindly treat a symptom without first trying to diagnose the underlying condition that is causing the symptom, or the condition may either not go away or may get worse. It seems very upside-down to offer “stress relief” (for the stress that the system causes) through therapy, “wellness resources” and “peer support to talk about the hardships” — all things that require even more time, which is already a precious commodity that physicians have far too little of. The surveys that were alluded to told the story — loss of autonomy, addition of tasks like medical messaging with no time allotted to answer them, more electronic record-keeping (which actually takes significantly more time), and all the while being pressured to increase “access” and “productivity.”

The underlying theme is time more than money. The point is not necessarily to get paid for “hours at night catching up on paperwork and patient emails,” but rather to change the system and create a situation where those crazy and stressful hours are not the norm. The changes that finally have come along to decrease some of the workload, and give back some time, are welcome and are helping. But until there is a way to truly allow enough time to do an excellent job treating complex, older patients and to deal with the ever-increasing inbox work without sacrificing the other important parts of life, I fear for the future state of medical care.

I watched a livestream of Match Day at my alma mater, where the young, passionate, excited fourth-year medical students received their residency program assignments — and I hoped, for them and for those of us who they will care for, that we can figure out a way to restore work-life balance so that they can keep their energy and passion while doing the work that they love and are called to do, rather than relegating them to burnout and “death by a thousand cuts.”

Cindy Smith, Edina

In a perfectly legitimate (but too long) opinion piece, Sheletta Brundidge argues that “Black moms must be guardians and bodyguards,” too. I take her point, as do most of us. But by resorting to the stereotype of a “Karen” she maligns a whole group of people, lumps white women together and name calls. I detest President Donald Trump, and that’s exactly what he does, creates hate and sets us against each other. How much better her piece would have been if she hadn’t resorted to name-calling and had stuck to naming the one person who acted outrageously.

Can’t we move beyond the Karens and Dicks stereotypes?

Karen Jacobson Storm, St. Anthony Village

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I think we all can agree that the situation in Rochester involving racial slurs is repulsive and unacceptable, but calls for the offender to be charged are too much (“Rochester leaders seek charges for woman in racist viral video,” May 8). I understand the impulse to want to see some sort of justice served, but to the best of my (admittedly average) knowledge of the Constitution, the First Amendment doesn’t make exceptions for idiocy being involved. Free speech is free speech.

We’ve been hearing a lot from the left about President Donald Trump unraveling the Constitution on his way to a dictatorship, that the Constitution is sacred and must be upheld at all costs. So, Rochester, this is your test, all right. But not in the way the story implied. Which is it? Is the Constitution the last word or not?

John Morgan, Burnsville