Finding a Green Way to Govern

This morning, the Council also unanimously adopted Council Member Andrew Johnson's update to the City's Environmentally Acceptable Packaging ordinance .  You can read the staff report here , and view their powerpoint presentation here . I enthusiastically supported this ordinance, and I'm glad that it passed with such a strong show of support from the Council.  I view this as one of many actions we will have to take to make good on our commitments to move towards a Zero Waste goal for Minneapolis. Polystyrene foam, is simply not a good solution for food service.  It is difficult or impossible to successfully recycle.  It can't be recycled into food service products, but can only be "down-cycled" into other types of items like clothes hangers, flower pots, and picture frames.  It must be very clean and dry in order to be recycled.  It leaches styrene, a likely carcinogen, into hot, oily, or acidic foods.  Even rigid polystyrene is not a good idea....

This morning, the Council unanimously passed the ordinance I authored that will allow mobile grocery stores to operate in Minneapolis.  This is a small but significant step towards increasing healthy food access in our city, and building our local alternative food economy by allowing more small-scale, food businesses to operate in the city. Businesses that can help support local growers and connect our area farms and farmers with Minneapolis residents. This amendment came about because potential mobile grocery store operators came forward more than a year ago to let us know that the existing “Groceterias and Portable Stores” ordinance was too restrictive for any of them to operate in Minneapolis.  There are now at least two operators looking to get up and running within the next year: UrbanVentures and the Wilder Foundation.  With their participation, and that of Honeybee Mobile Market and the Hmong American Farmers Association, we came up with changes to th...

The Charter Commission has again proposed that the City Council consider amending the city charter, by unanimous vote, to raise the fee charged to run for office in Minneapolis. The amendment would allow a candidate’s name to appear on the ballot if the candidate files an affidavit of candidacy and either pays the required filing fee or submits a petition in place of the filing fee with the number of signatures for which the Minnesota election law provides, 500 or 5% of the number of people who voted for that office in the last election, whichever is less.   That would translate to about 100-200 signatures for City Council or Park Districts seats and 500 for city wide races like at-large park commissioner, Board of Estimate and Taxation and mayor. The filing fee is currently $20 for all races and they are proposing that it be increased as follows: for Mayor, $250; for Council member, $100; for Board of Estimate & Taxation member, $20 (no change); and for Park & Rec...

This afternoon, the Council's Health, Environment and Community Engagement committee received a very informative presentation from the Minneapolis Tree Advisory Commission.  Their recommendations for the City and Park Board are on the second to last page, and include replacing ash trees as quickly as possible, increasing funding for the CityTrees program, creating a new "Tree Preservation Coordinator" in the Park Board, and better caring for young trees.  I want to thank the Tree Commission for consistently giving one of the best reports of any of our many City boards and commissions - it's thoughtful and pragmatic, but still communicates the urgency of the needs of our urban forest. The committee directed the Commission to come back to us in June with recommendations for how to best spend $443,140.34 that is currently in the City’s Capital Improvement Program for "City Property Reforestation."  These dollars are currently in the Property Services budget,...

This morning, the Council adopted a new long-term carbon emission reduction goal for the City of Minneapolis: we will strive to reduce carbon emissions by 80% or more by 2050, from a 2006 baseline.   This is in line with the recommendations of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations and the 2050 goals already adopted by the State of Minnesota and Hennepin County, and was recommended by the City’s Sustainability staff and the Community Environmental Advisory Committee .   I want to thank both our staff and CEAC for their quick work and thorough analysis. The work to draft this recommendation was in response to a staff direction I made back in February of this year.   I enthusiastically supported setting this goal, and hope that we can push well past reaching it.   However, we need to be clear that this is a very aggressive goal.   Reducing our carbon emissions by 80%  will require a fundamental transformation o...