Finding a Green Way to Govern

It looks like a 2009 implementation of Ranked Choice Voting (aka IRV) in City elections is more likely than ever. While we did not find machines to do the job, staff is recommending that we use a hand count. I am very supportive of this idea. Below for your information is the text from a memo we received this morning. I think this is great news. It is my understanding that the only way this could be delayed now is if the City Council actually voted to delay it, despite our staff saying it is possible. I can't imagine how we could justify doing that. So, I am celebrating a little today and I invite you to do the same. ========================== M E M O R A N D U M To: City Council Members From: Cindy Reichert , Elections Director Subject: Responses to Voting Equipment RFP Date: September 30, 2008 On August 1st the City of Minneapolis received responses to a Request for Proposal for services and equipment needed to conduct municipal elections using the method of Ranked Choice ...

Minneapolis has been named one of the most sustainable cities in the United States by SustainLane.com, an online people-powered guide to sustainable living. Minneapolis ranked number seven, moving up from the tenth spot in 2005, among the 50 most populous cities in the nation. SustainLane’s rankings are based on 16 different indicators that cover many sustainable practice areas, including local food availability, tap water quality, air quality, metro transit ridership, energy and climate change, and green building practices; the indicators show where cities are excelling or struggling. The rankings also take into consideration the chance of natural disasters and the preparation that cities have made to handle those catastrophes. Minneapolis ranked high among other cities in many indicators, such as the availability of local food and agriculture (#1), city innovation (#6) and green economy (#7). The city was referred to as a “Midwestern jewel of a city” and was also recognized for the c...

Natural gas utility CenterPoint Energy will be holding two meetings in the Second Ward to give residents information about natural gas bill payment assistance: October 1, 5-8pm at Matthews Park . October 14, 5-8pm at Van Cleve Park . Community Action will help folks complete their applications, and CenterPoint Energy will meet to discuss payment plan options. If you attend, please bring your most recent CenterPoint Energy bill and household income verification, which are both required to complete energy assistance applications. If you can't attend one of these meetings and need help, call 612-372-4680 or go here .

Today, the Health Energy and Environment committee moved forward an exciting new Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Policy , which creates some great new standards for goods and services purchased by the City. For instance, all of our paper products will contain the highest post consumer content practicable. As importantly, the Purchasing Department has been empowered to automatically substitute more environmentally friendly products. I attempted to strengthen this action in two small but important ways. First, because it's not practical to include every single thing the City buys or may ever buy in a policy like this, I moved to add text that would cover goods and services not enumerated in the policy. The text stated that the City will use the precautionary principle and err on the side of protecting human health and the environment when making decisions about products not listed in the policy. Second, I moved to require the new "Sustainable Purchasing Committee" c...

On Monday, at approximately 5:09pm, Ahmed Nur Ahmed Ali was shot outside of the Brian Coyle Center on the West Bank. The 20-year-old Augsburg College student had just finished his first day as an intern for the Center. This is the third homicide this year in the neighborhood. West Bank residents and business owners have been taking increasing steps to prevent the rising tide of youth violence, including a twice-weekly safety walk. The City has partnered with organizations in the area to help improve the physical condition of commercial spaces, increase beat patrols and coordination between area security officers. I have heard that the Brian Coyle Center is proposing to install security cameras outside, hire a security officer or police liaison from 5-10pm nightly, work to increase police presence in Currie Park and surrounding streets and hire two Somali outreach workers focused on connecting with Somali young adults. These ideas and more were discussed on Thursday, September 24th a...

The Community Crime Prevention division of the Minneapolis Police Department is hosting a personal safety workshop on Thursday, October 16, 7-9pm at Washburn High Auditorium, 201 W 49th St. The workshop will be led by Mary Brandl, a self defense expert. If you have questions, please call Crime Prevention Specialist Amy Lavender at 612-673-5407 or amy.lavender(at)ci.minneapolis.mn.us.

City Planning staff has been working for some time on text amendments for the zoning code, dealing with off-street parking requirements . They've done extensive research into best practices in other cities and come up with a general direction for the revision. It calls for more flexible and context-sensitive minimum parking requirements, more widespread use of bicycle parking requirements, and the first-ever set of limits on the amount of automobile parking that can be provided. (It's important to note that the ongoing University District study will also potentially create unique parking rules for the U District neighborhoods, which would trump this citywide change.) Planning staff have scheduled opportunities for community input: Focus group with business associations, Wednesday, October 1, 10–11am, Northeast Library meeting room, 2200 Central Ave NE. Neighborhood-focused open house, Thursday, October 16, 6:30–8:30pm, Martin Luther King Recreation Center multi-purpose room, 40...

In light of the recent concerns that have been raised about police actions during the RNC, I thought it might be useful for people to know options that have to I file a complaint against a Minneapolis police officer? As a council member I can use the number, nature and status of complaints to help me guide discussion and policy decisions. To date there have been no formal external complaints made related to RNC activity. To file a complaint you have 3 options within the City. If you have a lawyer please consult with them before proceeding with any of these. The Police Internal Affairs Unit, the Mpls . Civilian Police Review Authority and the Mpls . Dept. of Civil Rights provide citizens with avenues to bring complaints of misconduct and inappropriate behavior against Police. A complaint can be initiated by contacting the Minneapolis Civilian Police Review Authority ( CRA ) office and speaking to an investigator. An official complaint does not exist until an investigator drafts...

As you can read here, the Mayor and Council President Johnson have asked for an "After Action Review" and report to Council by the Minneapolis Police Department. This is in addition to the Heffelfinger/Luger investigation, which will focus on police actions in St. Paul. Though I continue to think that one comprehensive, multi-jurisdictional investigation into the actions of all law enforcement agencies involved in RNC events (including federal, state, county and local agencies) would be most useful, I will support any meaningful Minneapolis-specific investigation and/or report. To make the Mayor's requested report as meaningful as possible, I attempted to pass the following staff direction at today's Public Safety and Regulatory Services committee: Staff Direction By Gordon MPD staff will conduct an After Action Review and produce a report on the RNC, to be completed by the end of October 2008 and provided to the Mayor and Public Safety and Regulatory Services Committ...

I had an interesting opportunity today to participate in a state recount, stemming from the fact that the margin between the second and third place candidates in a judicial race was within .05% of the total votes cast. State statute calls for a mandatory recount of votes for the two candidates. Minneapolis Elections jumped into action, making their Elections Warehouse and Training Center the counting center for the more than 40,000 ballots cast in the cities of Minneapolis, Richfield and St. Louis Park. Our Elections Director, Cindy Reichert, put out a call for help to Council staff, and I took her up on the opportunity to see the inner workings of democracy in action. The Counting Center was already filling with staff from the three cities elections departments and clerks' offices, folks from the Secretary of State's office and others when I arrived at 8:30. I was impressed at the quick but thorough training we received, and at the efficiency of the recount when it started ...

Recently, the City unveiled a new Green Building web page . This page is accessed from the Minneapolis Development Review homepage , and contains information and links to encourage our customers to use more environmentally sustainable building practices, such as renewable energy, reused and recycled materials, energy efficiency and stormwater management. This is a key component of the City's Green Building Initiative, and I commend Development Review for completing this great website - and for sharing the same information with people at the MDR counter day after day.

A new study provides yet more evidence that Bisphenol-A (or BPA), one of the chemicals that the Council, at my urging, supported phasing out in children's products, does indeed put people at greater risk for serious illness. Perhaps this will be enough to convince Governor Pawlenty that these chemicals shouldn't be in pacifiers? I will work to keep support for a BPA phaseout on the City's Legislative Agenda for 2009.

Back February 2008, when I learned that the new 35W bridge construction would cut off a pedestrian and bike connection, and after it was clear that this cost would not be covered by the state or feds, I successfully pushed for the Council to set aside up to $1.2 million in municipal state aid funds for a bike and pedestrian tunnel as part of the rebuilding the Interstate 35W Bridge. As the new bridge is set to reopen, I recently learned that City staff worked with MnDOT and Flatiron-Masson Joint Venture staff to design the tunnel in very efficient, safe, and cost effective manner. The final agreement between MnDOT and the City estimates the tunnel will cost about $841,500, which is less than the City’s preliminary estimate of $900,000 and is well below the $1.2 million appropriated. The tunnel will remain closed, however, as the City secures funding to build the remaining portions of the bike and pedestrian trail between Bridge 9 (east side) to 13thAve/2nd St (west side) which will d...

As you can read here , the Environmental Protection Agency has decided on their cleanup level for the South Minneapolis Arsenic Contamination site. They plan to remove soil from yards that have an arsenic level of 25 parts per million (ppm) or above to a depth of one foot, and removal of all deeper soil in yards that contain 95ppm or more. This amounts to 488 yards, including the 77 yards that were already slated for cleanup due to contamination above 95ppm. The cleanup standard EPA has chosen is somewhat disappointing to me. I joined Environmental Justice Advocates of Minnesota (EJAM) and others in calling for a lower cleanup standard. The literature on arsenic suggests that contamination in the range of 10ppm can be dangerous, especially for children, and the baseline arsenic content in Minneapolis soil is certainly no greater than 17. Still, it is good that this cleanup will be proceeding. EPA believes the work will take about four years. At the time that it is completed, I would su...

As you may have noticed, for the last year the Second Ward blog has been graced by a neat little tracker gizmo: the ClustrMap over there in the upper right corner. It places little red dots all over a world map, showing the locations of the more than fifteen thousand page views we've received since last September. It's been fascinating to watch the dots appear, especially in places far from Minneapolis. To keep the map from becoming, as the ClustrMap folks put it, a "giant red smear," they have archived the past year's map here , and will soon replace it with a blank slate that we can watch fill up with dots again. Wherever you're from, Minneapolis or Australia, thanks for reading - and please feel free to comment.

There continues to be progress being made towards a neighborhood revitalization program in the future. Several important steps have been taken in the passed several weeks and I think there is room for hope and concern. As things progress we will get a better indication of what the future will look like and it will important for to identify areas where there is the potential for making improvements. The NRP Framework for the Future work group has given its final report and, while many are worried and concerned about the future, I think it is important to note that we’ ve made real progress towards ensuring a healthier future of our neighborhood organizations and a continued neighborhood revitalization program. When I took office a future NRP program was a big priority for me. The fact that the funding for the current program will end in 2009 offered both concern and opportunity. The concern was that there would no longer be a The most significant recommendations in the report incl...

I continue to be disturbed by the emerging pattern of law enforcement intimidation of journalists covering the Republican National Convention, including the arrests of Amy Goodman , Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous of the Democracy Now! news show, the photographer from the New York Post, other journalists and the confiscation of equipment from the Glass Bead Collective last week. As someone who worked very hard throughout this year to see journalists, observers, protesters and law abiding by-standers as well protected as the delegates here to participate in RNC, many of the reports I have been reading and hearing about , as well as the images I have been seeing , are discouraging . The incidents involving the targeting and harassment of observers and reporters shows a particularly troubling trend that is not consistent with my hopes of showing the world how our Cities value nonviolence, respect civic debate, and are committed to preserving free speech. I believe tha...

Statement on Recent Law Enforcement Actions Targeting Protest Organizers from Minneapolis Council Members Cam Gordon and Elizabeth Glidden On Friday August 29th, a large, peaceful Critical Mass bike ride occurred in Minneapolis where protesters, passersby and police conducted themselves in a civil and respectful way - a hopeful beginning to the Republican National Convention and related protest events, marches, and citizen journalism. On Friday evening and Saturday morning, homes in Minneapolis and a place of assembly in St Paul were raided by law enforcement; residents were detained and property seized. These actions were initiated, to our knowledge, by the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office. Although we do not have the information available to law enforcement, we are concerned that the level of force used during these raids does not appear to match the alleged threat posed. The seizure of the Earth Activist Training Permaculture Demonstration Bus (Permibus), young activists pulled ove...