Senior serves on city commission
Isaac Mintzer provides input to Human Rights Commission
Used with permission from Isaac Mintzer
Senior Isaac Mintzer signs his certificate of appointment after being sworn in to the Golden Valley Human Rights Commission on July 18.
October 26, 2017
When senior Isaac Mintzer joined the City of Golden Valley Human Rights Commission, he joined with serving his community in mind. Mintzer said this stems from childhood commitments.
“Since I was little my father helped ingrain in me the sense that I have to give back to my community, and I’ve been working on that since I was really young,” Mintzer said. “As more opportunities presented themselves as I got older I took advantage of them.”
Mintzer said the Commission’s task is to advise the city council, and recently discussed Golden Valley as a possible sanctuary city.
“We’ve done a couple of things, one big one we’ve been working on recently is deciding if we should turn our city of Golden Valley in to a sanctuary city,” Mintzer said “What we ultimately decided to do is we recommended implementing some of the rules that were not in practice for the city council to review and vote for or against, because that’s our job as the commission.”
Mintzer’s mother and Golden Valley resident Heidi Schneider said the close knit local community has helped Isaac to successfully serve on the Commission.
“(Isaac) has always been a person who instinctively cares a lot about fairness and justice. I think the council saw his involvement with boys scouts and community service and saw the Human Rights Commission was a good fit,” Schneider said. “We have a very strong neighborhood group, so Isaac has always been very connected. Golden Valley has a very active Commission and a really tight neighborhood with neighbors who really know and care about each other.”
Mintzer said a crucial part of the commission’s goal is fostering an all-inclusive community.
“We talk a lot about on the human rights commission it’s our responsibility, to not just be helpful but also to be an open community in any way shape or form, so we try to keep that in mind when we are going through what our goals are as a city and as a Commission,” Mintzer said. “When we go and look an issue, we try to keep that perspective.”
Senior member of the City of Saint Louis Park Planning Commission Ethan Rickert said he encourages becoming a member of a board or commission you can best work with.
“I would definitely say you should look at (different boards and commissions) and see if one of them would be a clear fit for you,” Rickart said. “(Serving) better connects you to the community, is very easy community service hours, and you learn about a different side of the community most people don’t really know about. It’s usually fun.”
Rickert said his commission believes youth input is of great value to the city as a whole.
As (the Planning Commission) explained, the youth’s opinions of how events will affect their neighborhood are really important, for example, when the Rec Center did their proposal to replace the skatepark with the outdoor ice rink, I certainly had a lot to say about that.” Rickert said.
Schneider said the work the Golden Valley Human Rights Commission is doing covers important topics that can reach beyond the the city they represent.
“The kinds of things the Human Rights Commission does in Golden Valley are a lot of really fascinating political initiatives, for example, when Isaac got on the council they were looking at the question of becoming a sanctuary city or not, which has national implications,” Schneider said. “Isaac loves to debate and and there are philosophical and global debates which the Commission is involved with.”
