Mayor’s Minutes: Brooklyn Park’s Hollies Winston
Brooklyn Park Mayor Hollies Winston talks with CCX Media’s Dave Kiser about supporting business growth in the city, legislative priorities for the new session in St. Paul, and how the city hopes to intervene in the lives of young people to prevent crime.
Business development
In response to recent big box retail closings on Brooklyn Park’s southwestern corner, Mayor Winston said the city is putting a new emphasis on growing business development both through outreach from city departments including police and community development to fostering the use of the city’s Small Business Center.
“We’re going to start reaching out to businesses, figuring out some of the issues that they’re struggling with, making sure that businesses are safe, and largely we’ve found that they are safe,” said Winston. “Just providing tools to businesses to make sure they feel comfortable here.”
Legislative Priorities
Priorities city leaders have identified as the state legislature reconvenes in St. Paul include money to help expand the Community Activity Center, to better develop the BioTech District, and more resources for law enforcement.
The city has identified more basketball courts at the CAC as a community need, and wants state money to help with it.
“So we’re going to be going to the legislature and making a case, and saying, ‘Look, we serve as regional infrastructure for youth throughout this region and for folks throughout this region,'” said Winston.
There are also efforts combined among several northwest metro cities to address growing concerns about safety and propagation of so-called congregate care facilities–group homes that are in residential neighborhoods. Winston said there are a “disproportionate amount of those facilities in Brooklyn Park.”
“We need resources to be able to support that,” he said.
Brooklyn Park police hired LaTreasure Dickson to head up the new Community Intervention office.
Community Intervention Services
One area of public safety that Winston and other city leaders are proud to get started in the new year is the police department’s Community Intervention team.
“We’ve had violence intervention folks in the past, they kind of serve between the police and the community,” said Winston. “(This team) is going to serve internally with the police. That means we can make sure we have a certain level of quality control, we can track where people are going to be, and we’re going to make sure we’re finding out where there’s issues with youth, and where they’re congregating and different youth that are dealing with issues, and we’re going to hone in on that and provide them the resources they need, because we want to get upstream of this crime.”
