The latest in a long string of disputes between the mayor and the city council centers on the behavioral crisis response (BCR) contract, a service currently provided by Canopy Roots, a local Black-owned business.
Mayor Frey launched a request for proposals to expand the program’s scope so it would cover more types of non-emergency calls. Canopy Roots, for example, does not accept calls that come from homeless shelters. Frey and his staff chose Community Bridges, a firm based in Arizona. The city council rejected that choice, the mayor vetoed the council’s action, and the future of the service in 2027 is now uncertain.
Expect this pattern to repeat over the next two years as the council and mayor continue to struggle over power. Voters who approved the “strong mayor” system in 2021 may have hoped that giving the mayor administrative authority over all departments would lead to a more functional City Hall. So far, the result has been more infighting.
Power Struggles Are Costly for Taxpayers
The city launched the BCR program after the murder of George Floyd. Its goal is to send mental health calls to people trained in de-escalation and support, rather than to police. Many of the people involved in these calls are not committing a crime. They need someone to help them through a moment of distress.
Like many alternatives to policing, the program suffers from council micromanagement, poorly defined measures of success, and questionable billing practices.
The council moved the program from the Neighborhood Safety Department to the Minneapolis Fire Department (MFD) with little explanation, and without giving MFD the guidance it needed to succeed. A recent audit of the program found the following:
When oversight moved from the Neighborhood Safety Department to MFD on January 1, 2025, MFD inherited major gaps. Missing performance measures, inconsistent documentation, and weak financial controls continued through the first year. These gaps made it harder to oversee a contracted crisis response model within a department built for direct emergency response.
The city has not defined performance measures.
The contractor’s billing and MFD’s review process do not line up.
Invoicing and review practices do not follow consistent criteria.
In short, Canopy Roots bills the city $5.9 million per year, the maximum the contract allows. According to a sample from the city’s 911 dashboard, the program handles about 2% of 911 calls, or roughly 14 calls a day. That suggests an estimated 5,110 calls per year, which works out to about $1,155 per call. Other reports have said they field as many as 10,000 calls a year, which equates to $590 per call. The lack of verifiable data make precise calculation impossible. Documentation of outcomes is scarce. As the audit put it, the contract requires the service to be available but sets no requirements for how well it performs, and the city lacks a complete record of its own oversight of Canopy Roots.
Read the city council’s press releases, and the BCR program sounds like an unqualified success. The releases offer no measure or evidence to back up that claim. They simply call the program a success and insist that Canopy Roots remain the vendor.
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Letting the city council choose vendors invites conflicts of interest. It brings to mind President Trump choosing a friend to “fix” the Reflecting Pool.
If the council and the mayor cannot agree on their roles, Minneapolis residents can expect more inefficiency and waste. The council’s job is to pass program budgets, not to pick the vendors who carry them out. The mayor’s job is to appoint capable leaders who track vendor spending and hold vendors to clear performance standards. Both sides need to keep ambiguity to a minimum.
All Politics Are Local
The accusations and power struggle over the BCR program reflect a narrowly divided, highly partisan government in which every compromise looks like weakness. That dynamic may help political careers, but residents pay for it through higher taxes, slower growth, and weaker services.
The parallel to federal politics is hard to ignore. If the polls are right, and many people doubt them, Democrats will win back at least the House next year. Expect bills and hearings that look good on paper but go nowhere, stopped in the Senate or vetoed by the president. Our politics are dominated by extremes: shouting, rallies, and protests. Diplomacy, statesmanship, and finesse feel like relics of another era.
With luck, the city council and the mayor can bend enough to restore some form of behavioral crisis response for 2027, and then do the harder work of passing a city budget.
