Finding a Green Way to Govern

This morning, the City's Director of Arts, Culture and Creative Economy, Gulgun Kayim, presented a very interesting and helpful report on the City's Creative Vitality Index . The CVI is a tool that measures annual changes in the economic health of highly-creative industries using information about organizational revenue, jobs, and other measures from creative businesses and nonprofits.   The Twin Cities metro area is sixth in the nation for our CVI score, or four and a half times greater than the national average.   Some other key metrics: the creative economy is responsible for over $700 million in local economic activity; charitable giving to arts organizations in the Twin Cities is thirteen and a half times greater than the national average; approximately 5% of Minneapolis residents work in a creative occupation, and 21% of creative jobs in Minnesota are located in Minneapolis.    The five creative occupations with the most jobs, in order, are photographers...

In addition to this morning's changes to the City's legislative agenda on guns, the Council tackled another incredibly important issue: immigration reform.  You can read the action here , see a powerpoint on education policy here , and see the full recommendations of the City's Latino Engagement Task Force here . The Committee of the Whole unanimously approved two changes to our legislative agenda.  The first makes clear that we support allowing all students - regardless of immigration status - who graduate from Minnesota high schools to pay in-state tuition to attend Minnesota public colleges and universities, and to apply for scholarships from the U of M and Minnesota State College and University system.  This puts Minnesota kids who happen to be undocumented immigrants in the same position as other students (including kids from Wisconsin) when it comes to paying for college. The second action makes clear that we support modifying the M...

This morning, the Council's Committee of the Whole voted to support a new slate of priority and support items for the City's state and federal legislative agendas on guns.  I strongly supported this action.  This is the time for Minneapolis policymakers to stand up and defend our community from gun violence, and I'm proud that we are responding to the tragedy of Sandy Hook - and the tragedies that occur on an ongoing basis in Minneapolis neighborhoods, like the death of Neengco Xiong. It's important to understand that some of the items on this new gun-specific part of our state agenda are in the current agenda; they're just spread out within the public safety section.  We are getting clearer about our focus on guns by putting all of our existing and new positions in one central location. We're also taking a stand on federal gun policy by explicitly supporting President Obama's “ Now is the Time: The President’s plan to protect our children and our commu...

It looks like the federal government and national historic preservation experts may be more in line with our own Minneapolis Historic Preservation Commission (HPC) than the City Council is. This week MPR reported  that the federal government has listed Peavey Plaza on the National Register of Historic Places. When this came before the Council last year, I was the only council member who voted in support of the recommendation of our HPC to preserve the plaza, at least until after a formal study of its historical significance was completed. 

I am working to identify effective actions the City can take to reduce gun deaths and injuries in Minneapolis.   This will include, first, a set of state and /or federal legislative initiatives the City formally supported through the Intergovernmental Relations Committee in late January and, second, items included in a resolution that will come to the Public Safety, Health and Civil Rights Committee in February. I am working closely with the Mayor’s office, Council colleagues, the Police Chief, City Attorney, the Minneapolis Commissioner of Health and the Intergovernmental Relations staff. I welcome feedback. Ideas so far include the following: 1)     Legislative agendas a.     Repeal or amend the state preemption statute to allow local innovations, b.     Ban on semi-auto, c.     Ban on high-capacity magazines, d.     More discretionary power to municipalities to grant or deny gun permit...