Almost a year ago, the opportunity and pleasure of working here in New Prague became a reality.
There was much to anticipate back then.
One of the neat facets of working in New Prague is the annual Dozinky Czech harvest festival. It’s been said there are points during the coming weekend when the community’s population could swell to well over 12, 13,000 or more people. That will be really cool to see and experience.
Plenty of volunteers have worked really hard to make Dozinky a success. They are doing all they can to present New Prague, its culture and their organizations in the best possible light. Please take a minute whenever you can and thank them for the effort.
Without them, there would be no community celebration.
In this week’s edition of The New Prague Times, there is a tabloid-sized insert promoting Dozinky.
It shows a glimpse of the many interesting and fun activities planned, from the car cruise to the parade, the softball and volleyball tournaments, the talent and variety show as well as other fun and interesting activities.
It is also nice to see people use Dozinky as an opportunity to hold informal class reunions. In a busy world, time, it seems, passes way too quickly these days and it’s easy to lose track of friends from years gone by.
One of my favorite pieces in the Dozinky tab is on Wally Cab. Sure, it’s a shameless promotional piece. But if you need a sober ride home, make good use of the service available to you. The cost of a DUI is huge and nobody wants a police officer knocking at the door with bad news from a crash scene involving an impaired driver who had other options to get home safely.
Hopefully, people will enjoy the weekend celebrating and reveling responsibly. Folks have worked hard to make Dozinky a special weekend. It doesn’t take much for the weekend to be ruined for all.
A few thoughts on the SRO kerfuffle Years ago, the state’s head umpire for youth and adult softball said 90 percent of the rule book is open to an umpire’s interpretation and as long as the ump had a firm grasp of the foundation of the rule, a justifiable decision on what call to make could be made.
Not passing on the opportunity to make political hay on the language governing school resource officers (SROs) and how they must make split-second decisions on restraining an uncooperative person, DFLers and Republicans are once again proving compromise is apparently a lost art neither is willing to practice in our latest episode of gotcha politics.
Republicans are taking advantage of language in a 200-plus page education bill they apparently overlooked or said nothing about when it passed in May. Now, they are criticizing DFLers who included vague language that arguably makes it tougher to do a difficult job well.
The language in the bill prohibits the use of “prone restraint,” and “certain physical holds shall not inflict any form of physical holding that restricts or impairs a student’s ability to breathe; restricts or impairs a pupil’s ability to communicate distress; places pressure or weight on a pupil’s head, throat, neck, chest, lungs, sternum, diaphragm, back, or abdomen; or results in straddling a pupil’s torso. Nobody here is suggesting it’s OK to place a knee on a person’s neck and prevent the person from having the ability to breathe or communicate the inability to breathe. Police are understandably frustrated with the lack of clarity and the restrictions placed upon them.
Subdivision 3 of Chapter 121A.58 of state statute says a teacher or SRO can use “reasonable force” when it is necessary under the circumstances to restrain a student or prevent bodily harm or death to another.
In a situation where a person is not cooperating with a police officer and decisions must be made in the blink of an eye, what exactly does “reasonable force” mean? We expect an officer to have that answer. And if the answer isn’t exactly correct, god forbid any of the people who undoubtedly will be there with their cell phone cameras might step in and help. Shame on the authors of this verbiage for leaving the doorway to misinterpretation wide open.
Shame on lawmakers for using it as just another opportunity to play gotcha politics. Gov. Walz said he wouldn’t be calling a special session to clean up the language at this time after reviewing clarifications from the attorney general’s office on the bill's language. The GOP accused Walz of not taking the school safety issue seriously. Sunday, Sept. 10, GOP State Chairman David Hahn accused Gov. Walz of going on a “junket” to Japan rather than work on a solution. The trip is supposedly a business retention and expansion effort between Minnesota companies and Japanese firms.
Sadly, this is another example of politics as usual.