Finding a Green Way to Govern

This morning, the Council adopted a policy on creating new Self-Managed Special Service Districts in Minneapolis .   This will allow business districts to form special service districts that they manage and control, if they want.    My office worked to ensure that this policy works as well as possible for existing neighborhood business associations that may want to manage special service districts.    The Council voted to create two governance models, at the request of business stakeholders.   One allows a Downtown Improvement District-style “Management Entity” that decides on budgets, services to be provided, and assessment models, while also providing services.   The other model would create a new City Advisory Board for the district that decides on budgets, services, and assessment models, and allow an existing nonprofit to provide the services and day-to-day management. I offered a successful amendment to clarify that there could be ...

I have recently been getting a number of questions and concerns about a new project I am working on that would formally permit and regulate Trap Neuter Return programs in Minneapolis. Under the proposal, nonprofit groups working with individual residents would be allowed to conduct what are called “Trap Neuter Release” or “Trap Neuter Return” (TNR) or, more accurately, Trap Neuter Vaccinate Return programs in Minneapolis. The City itself would not be conducting the programs. This proposal would add an additional tool or practice and would not eliminate any of the other policies or practices currently in use by Minneapolis Animal Care and Control staff. Some TNR programs have already been operating in Minneapolis but some of the practices involved conflict with current law. I believe there will be benefits to better regulating them. I am working on this because I believe that feral cats pose a significant health, safety, livability and environmental concerns in some areas of th...

The Star Tribune has run the op-ed I authored defending ranked choice voting, which had already been posted on the SecondWard blog here .

The 2012 resident survey results conducted by National Research Center, are available online and were presented at the City Council’s Feb. 20 Committee of the Whole meeting. The survey helps me understand the concerns and opinions of residents, in general, and also identify potential needs and priorities for the future. I read through the report carefully and look at trends and changes over years, how respondents from different areas respond and also how we compare with other cities across the nation. I also always look especially carefully at the areas I serve as Council Member. Generally the survey results mesh well with what I hear in my day to day work.   The survey indicated, for example, that the people generally like the direction the city is going and that snow plowing and park and rec services are of high priority. I was struck, although perhaps not too surprised, by how different views were between different parts of the City. The s...

There is quite a lot of misinformation swirling around regarding Ranked Choice Voting.  I have tried to bust some of these myths in the memo I circulated to legislators and through an op-ed that I submitted to the Star Tribune and posted earlier on this blog.  This is a 'utility post' for RCV myth-busting, bringing together as many of the commonly-repeated myths as I can, and providing a counterpoint from reality.  I'll note that I'm not the only one who has had this idea - FairVote Minnesota has also put out a very useful " Myths Vs. Facts " document.  Read more below the fold.

As you can read here ,  Xavier Demia Walker,  the last of three perpetrators of the horrific murder of Cooper resident Shea Stremcha has pleaded guilty .  According to court documents, Walker fired the shot that killed Stremcha.  He is expected to be given the maximum sentence, 40 years in prison. I want to thank the Minneapolis Police Department and Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman for their good work investigating and prosecuting this terrible crime.

The Star Tribune has run two anti-Ranked Choice Voting pieces, one of them a news article and one an Op-Ed.  They also ran a very good, pro-RCV commentary from Jeanne Massey , Executive Director of FairVote Minnesota. Here's my take: As a supporter of Ranked Choice Voting and someone who has closely followed its implementation in Minneapolis, I may be able to clear up some confusing information that has appeared in the Star Tribune recently. A February 28 article (“Funds for election come up short”) and March 5 opinion piece (“Ranked-choice voting hurts Minneapolis minorities”) contain a number of inaccuracies that warrant correcting. The article claims that “r anked-choice balloting… cost the city five times more than traditional voting.”  This is not accurate.  The Elections Department spent $1.47 million in 2009, the year of our first ranked choice (RCV) election.  They spent $1.12 million in 2005, our last non-ranked choice municipal electi...

The New York Times is out with a new article on cities considering forming municipal power utilities, and Minneapolis is mentioned.  I recommend that everyone interested in our energy future take a look.

Consideration of Hennepin County’s application to amend their conditional use permit to allow them to increase the amount of garbage they may burn at the Energy Recovery Center in downtown Minneapolis was discussed in February at the Zoning and Planning Committee. The County requested that the matter be postponed for another year, then withdrew the request saying it was not necessary but that they wanted the Council to delay any decision until after the a review by the state Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) was completed.   When this came to the Planning Commission over 3 years ago they denied the application. The County then appealed that decision and this has been stuck at the committee level ever since. It was clear at the committee that we had the authority to deny the appeal.   I favored this position in part because of the long delay, but also, more importantly, because the evidence supports the findings of the Planning Commission that increasing the capacity of the g...

Recenlty, I presented the below memo to a legislative committee considering a very good bill that will, if adopted, allow smaller "statutory" cities that don't have their own charters to use ranked choice voting (RCV) for their municipal elections. This bill has become an opportunity for a set of ranked choice voting opponents to criticize the 2009 RCV election in Minneapolis.  They are making the argument that RCV somehow disenfranchises certain communities, and point to "voter errors" in 2009 as proof. They are wrong.  No voters were disenfranchised in the 2009 election.  This memo is my rebuttal of the misinformation (or, perhaps, deliberate disinformation) they are spreading.