Finding a Green Way to Govern

The Urban Agriculture Text Amendments that come to the Zoning and Planning committee tomorrow are getting a lot of press this week. John Tevlin from the Star Tribune has an article out, as does MinnPost . These join an earlier editorial from the MN Daily in favor of the amendments and article in the Daily Planet (reposted from the Daily). It's great to see this attention to the issue. For one thing, it helps rebut one of the arguments being made by opponents of the text amendments: that "regular people" just haven't heard about them. It also helps get some of the specific proposals to weaken the amendments out on the table. I wanted to clarify a few points. I'm quoted twice in the Tevlin piece. The first of those quotes refers to the "doomsday scenarios" being peddled by some urban agriculture opponents. I used that phrase to refer to a specific fear: that if the Council allows market gardens in low-density residential areas, they might take up who...

The Council's Regulatory Energy and Environment passed the compost ordinance I authored this afternoon unanimously (with one abstention).  You can read the full text of the ordinance, the staff report , a helpful Powerpoint presentation , and see some sample site plans . The purpose of these changes is to increase the amount of composting that folks can do in the city and increase the flexibility of composting, while providing additional authorities to our staff to respond to anyone who is composting incorrectly and creating a nuisance.  So the maximum sizes of backyard composting sites will increase, and the maximum size at community gardens will increase even more.  The compost areas can be in whatever shapes work for composters (rather than the old 5'x5'x5' bins that were required by ordinance).  But composters must now cover their compost materials with an odor-reducing layer of dry leaves or wood chips, and if our staff find that folks are compost...

The Star Tribune has run an article on the consequences of the Council's misguided decision in 2006 to become the "anchor tenant" for the privately-owned USI Wireless internet system: the City has paid over $4 million for wi-fi services that we have not used . I consider this an enormous waste, whether the City ends up spending these credits or not.  Over the last five years, the Council has made numerous difficult decisions to close down services or cease providing support for extremely worthwhile programs in order to save much smaller sums of money.  Just recently, we closed down the Housing Support Services office for less.  We've ceased supporting Restorative Justice to the tune of even $20,000 per year.  We've recently ended our support for community organizing in public housing for only $68,000 per year.  We've had bitter fights over laying off firefighters to fill budget holes smaller than this. And as bad as $4.7 million over five years sounds...

The Charter Commission has begun its work on the 2012 redistricting process.  As you may recall, I helped lead the Charter amendment process back in 2009 to do away with the old, broken Redistricting Commission, and instead empower the Charter Commission to redraw Minneapolis' ward boundaries. The Charter Commission now has a first draft of new boundaries to share with the public, and will be holding public hearings on these draft maps on Februrary 29th and March 1st .  Find out more here . Additionally, Common Cause MN has put together a website that allows you to draw your own version of a City ward map.  They are organizing two related trainings.  A February 4 training will be held from 10am-noon at the Humphrey School, and will focus on how redistricting works at the local level.  A February 18 training will be held from 9:30am-12:30pm at UROC, and will show attendees how to draw their own maps using this innovative software. As I have noted pr...

The City has released the 2011 foreclosure data and maps There were 1,719 foreclosures in Minneapolis in 2011, down from 2,308 in 2010.  There were 39 foreclosures were in Ward 2 in 2010 and 19 in 2011.   It is good to see that foreclosures continue to decline from the 2008 high, but it is hard to see that so many home owners on in so many areas of our city are still struggling.