Councilors Ruthzee Louijeune and Gabriela Coletta are right about helping beleaguered businesses along the Methadone Mile and wrong about street sweepers.

Keeping the cleaning apparatus assigned to just the Mass and Cass area is not akin to the panic experienced during the AIDS crisis. It’s just a careful consideration about how to best cope with an unsanitary encampment the Wu administration inherited and can’t seem to fix.

The City Council backed a plan pitched by Councilor Erin Murphy to give businesses along the Mile a tax break for all the expenses they’ve incurred. Good first start!

Murphy also wants to keep the street sweepers assigned to that area in that area. It’s not a guarantee of any public health breakthrough, but it does sends a message that this zone is a hazard that must be contained.

Louijeune compared the request for separate cleaning equipment to what occurred during the AIDS/HIV crisis of the 1980s, when the Haitian community “was very much targeted in ways that were dehumanizing.”

A lot of mistakes were made during the AIDS crisis. Some of them were repeated during the COVID pandemic. One was making everything political.

That’s exactly what Louijeune is doing — again — when this Mass and Cass public health crisis calls for solutions over criticisms. Both dissenting councilors need to check their facts.