Memorial Day is here and with it the unofficial beginning of summer. You can now wear white. For some, the start of summer is the solstice, which this year falls on Sunday, June 21. But don’t let the sunshine fool you. When it comes to cooperation and progress at City Hall, there isn’t the joy of sunshine and festivals that come with the season. Minneapolis City Hall continues to be where dark clouds of disagreement and stagnation hover, a perpetual storm waiting to break.
As with our national politics, the upside for cooperation is limited. Donors and votes follow the uncompromising members of government. Minneapolis residents eager for progress on public safety and improved economic conditions are advised to lower their expectations. It will be a long 3½ years if you place your hopes on significant strides occurring in what appears to be a council and mayor who live in different cities.
The back and forth between the mayor and city council over the nomination of Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette is an appropriate symbol for the current situation. The city council voted 7-6 for a second time not to approve his nomination, but instead of sending the motion back to Frey for a potential third veto, it was moved into administrative hibernation. At this point, it’s unclear how long Barnette will retain his job. In an odd twist, Wonsley initiated a motion to begin a new nationwide replacement search, but because Ward 8 council member Soren Stevenson abstained from voting, the motion failed with a 6-6 vote. We’re interested to hear why he chose to abstain and will report on his position when we learn more.
Let’s pretend for a moment that he had voted with Wonsley to begin a search. Who do they think is going to step up and apply? Yes, the $374,000 salary is the highest in the city, but the gauntlet of criticism and second-guessing that anyone in this role must endure is substantial. The same uncertainty extends to the police chief. Chief Brian O’Hara’s renomination has been assigned to the Public Health, Safety, & Equity Committee with no set schedule for when a public hearing and vote will take place. However, if the questioning from Ward 10 council member Aisha Chughtai is any indicator, the odds of a smooth approval are low. He was repeatedly asked about exceeding his budget, including on food and beverage, parking, advertising, and overtime. Chughtai isn’t the only council member unsupportive of him. It’s quite possible the city will end up searching for both a new Police Chief and Commissioner of Community Safety. The disruption to progress on reform and safety will be substantial, and the search costly.
The motion to spend $6 million for the purpose of purchasing land in the Windom neighborhood of South Minneapolis for a new Community Safety Wellness & Training Center was also voted down in a 7-6 vote.
AI Debate Heats Up the Room
A development award, a decade-old building dispute, and a city council moratorium on data centers may seem unrelated, but all three reveal the same underlying problem: Minneapolis has no coherent plan for ensuring that public investment, whether in nonprofits or private industry, delivers sustainable results.
Start with the nonprofits. None of the three major civic development projects currently underway has a credible path to self-sufficiency. Agape Movement will be awarded development rights for the Peoples’ Way if approved by the city council, where they will be tasked with assembling a team to raise funds, design, and build. Their proposal is available online. Our fundamental outlook for their success improved slightly after meeting Thursday with Miles Mercer of CPED and Alex Kado from the Office of Public Service to learn more about the Request for Qualifications process, but many questions remain about what will ultimately become of the Peoples’ Way. They will rely on public grants and private donations.
To many, the requirement that the developer be a nonprofit will make sense. For others, it raises concerns about accountability, concerns the Roof Depot situation in East Phillips does little to allay. After ten years of carrying the costs of a vacant building, the city has reached an agreement with the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI): the nonprofit will spend $6 million in state-granted funds to buy half the building, while the city retains the other half with no current plans for it. The agreement will allow EPNI to pursue their long-held goal of creating an urban farm on the site. Then there is the Rise Up Center, slated for the former YWCA on Hennepin Avenue. All three projects share the same vulnerability: continued dependence on public grants and the goodwill of politicians. The current track record of Minnesota politicians providing adequate oversight of nonprofit finances and operations is poor, which makes it difficult for us to have confidence in these endeavors.
That’s the nonprofit sector. What about private industry? At Thursday’s city council meeting, the first several hours were consumed with a debate over data centers and the creeping role that AI plays in our lives. We fully understand the skepticism, we are as tired as anyone of every program asking whether we want AI assistance. The council stepped back from a full one-year moratorium and adopted a six-month moratorium on data centers over 350,000 square feet, with a public hearing scheduled for mid-June. This debate reflects a national concern about how AI is reshaping the job market. The conversation about how Minneapolis and Minnesota prepare for this technological shift has only just begun.
The moratorium on its own is unlikely to keep investors away from Minneapolis. The same could be said of the concrete median running down Hennepin Avenue, it alone didn't cause Red Cow to close. What concerns us is the cumulative effect of decisions and policies that appear to discount the importance of private investment and business to the city's health. High taxes, heavy regulation, and persistent public discord between the mayor and city council are deterrents. These and other debates about non-core issues feed an impression of instability and unpredictability that compounds over time. When someone is weighing where to relocate a business or a family, they are increasingly passing on Minneapolis.
The city we moved to 20 years ago looks different from the one that exists today. The schools are struggling. Downtown buildings are no longer generating the taxes they once did. Unemployment runs higher than the national average. City governance appears to be in disarray. For our meeting downtown we rode the bus. Afterwards, we went to write in the library. It required navigating past multiple unhoused individuals asleep in the library, others screaming into cell phones about court dates, and on the way home, a woman nodding off in the bus aisle. Minneapolis needs to take its reputation seriously.
The city needs a coherent plan for improving its reputation and attracting the kind of businesses that create jobs. Watching City Hall, we’re confident the plan won’t originate there. What might be more effective is a private group of civic leaders empowered to draft a plan without concern for pleasing the interest groups on which politicians depend. Given the pace of change, particularly with AI, that plan must take shape within the next few years. The choice Minneapolis must make is whether to be known for its foresight or remembered for its infighting.
Thank you for listening and caring about Minneapolis.
