Finding a Green Way to Govern

Yesterday, the Executive Committee decided to reject the current terms of the proposed lawsuit settlement presented by her attorney and directed the City attorney to begin the process for removing Fire Chief Bleskachek as Chief of the Fire department. The first step to do this is to formally notify the Cheif of our intention. This decision was the result of one of the most intense, focused and serious meetings I have participated in since taking office. It took place during a closed meeting (closed because we were discussing confidential personnel matters) of the Executive committee over the course of nearly 4 hours. Even though it was a meeting of the 5 person Executive Committee, all 13 Council Members, as well as the Mayor, attended. We all listened carefully to staff reports, asked questions, engaged in earnest discussion and worked hard to come consensus about what the best next steps should be. In the end, all five of the other Committee Members: Mayor Rybak , Council Preside...

Last week, a bit of a brouhaha erupted over the art project that Seward Neighborhood Group and Seward Redesign had put together on the vacant Riverside Market. (See past posts for more information on the planning process for the redevelopment of this site.) The project's goal was to cover the large, blank walls that had increasingly become graffiti magnets with public art. The artists were each given a portion of the wall to work in, and their finished products were striking and, as art often is, controversial. My office heard from the City's Solid Waste and Recycling (SW&R) department that they had received numerous complaints through the City's 311 program about graffiti on the site. Unless the owner of the property agreed to cover the 'graffiti', it would be covered by a City crew. My office forwarded this information to SNG and Redesign to alert them to the possibility that the murals might be covered, and the response was immediate and unequivocal: the ...

Youth violence is one of most serious problems we face in Minneapolis. Murder is the number one cause of death for our 15-24 year olds and just this morning another 24 year-old fell victim to another shooting death. Working to stop the disturbing and persistent increase in youth violence in our City is, in my opinion, one of the most important things that we can do as a community and as policymakers in City Hall. Today I think we took a significant step forward. The Youth Violence Prevention resolution that I've been working on for weeks passed the Council unanimously today. I encourage you to read the full resolution ( here ) - it presents a powerful rationale for why we ought to view this as a public health crisis and spells out a framework for developing a muti-year, muti-faceted strategic plan to dramatically reduce youth violence in Minneapolis. The resolution redefines youth violence as a public health problem, rather than just a public safety and criminal justice problem. Th...

I was thrilled on Election Night to see that Minneapolis voters adopted Ranked Choice Voting (also known as Instant Runoff Voting or IRV) as our local election method. It was a landslide: 65% yes , 35% no. I'm proud that the Second Ward had the highest vote totals of any Ward in the City: 70.7% yes . This is a huge step forward for Minneapolis democracy, and hopefully only a first step towards better voting methods for the State and Federal levels. I also consider this an important victory for the Green Party as well, which has had IRV in its platform for almost a decade and a top prioriy in Minneapolis since 2001. It's exciting to see mainstream voters enthusiastically embracing such a fundamental part of the Green platform. This is also gratifying for me personally. I have been advocating for IRV for years now, since the book clubs with Tony Solgard (now outgoing President of FairVote MN ) and others in 1997. I remember how hard it was in 1999 and 2001 when we tried to get I...