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Progress on Parking: A Channel 79 EXCLUSIVE

image credit: Omar Bárcena

Minneapolis is one City Council vote away from enacting a major, nationally-heralded parking reform authored by Council Member Lisa Bender. I’ve watched with great interest as the debate has unfolded on Channel 79. To summarize the back-and-forth as uncharitably as possible: utopians on bicycles deployed a slew of crowd-pleasing parking analogies* (1, 2), while some of our city’s original inhabitants countered with predictions of the aparkolypse (it’s a “boondoggle” of an “epic fail”).

One misconception coming from opponents of the policy is that it will cause the parking ratio for housing construction in the specified transit corridors to fall to zero. This mistaken assumption is the basis for the primary argument you hear from parking maximalists: this policy will fail because there are still so many cars and drivers out there (Minneapolis isn’t ready for your radical car-free agenda!).
It’s true, cars are still a thing. Which is why developers, and the banks who loan them money, aren’t about to start creating crisis-level parking situations that sink their investments. But I’m just restating Council Member Lisa Goodman’s rebuttal to what she sees as “a lot of misunderstanding” regarding this plan:

We’re not telling developers not to build parking. We’re just simply saying we’re not going to tell you what the minimum or maximum is going to be. I personally think that’s a better role for the city. The people who have their money in the game are the ones who are going to have to determine if they can sell or rent homes.

Goodman went on to explain how the policy will lower the cost of constructing affordable housing, and that “new buildings cannot be required to solve the problems [i.e. lack of parking] of existing buildings” (her full remarks are worth watching).
Then there’s the charge that this policy is corporate welfare, a sop to developers. I hear this a lot, as it’s often delivered Tourette-style, right in my ear (by the way, it’s an honor and a privilege to serve on my neighborhood association’s Board of Directors). At first, I dismissed this as phony left-wing populism, but just today I saw a note from a parking profiteer on the bulletin board downstairs. Now I’m ready to pretend to take this pretend argument seriously.
“This business plan is going to require a manufactured parking crisis. Who do we know at City Hall?”

Lowry Hill East is fertile ground for parking entrepreneurs, with many parking lots constructed soon after Minneapolis enshrined residential parking minimums into the 1963 zoning code. One of those lots belongs to my apartment building. I regularly and obsessively count the empty stalls; according to my non-scientific analysis, the effect of our city’s 50-year-old regulations is a parking lot that never exceeds 60 percent full (as a pessimist, I tend to see it as 40 percent empty). Extrapolate this surplus parking goldmine to similar buildings in the neighborhood, and you can imagine the potential for ill-gotten gains.**

This is to say nothing of unintended consequences; squeeze the supply of parking too tight, and some “job creator” will capitalize by building more parking. It’s not a stretch to say this policy assures even more parking will be built. If you’re a knee-jerk liberal urbanist like myself, the last thing you want is another corporate parking lot. Even so, I’m not pretending when I say this is still a plan worth supporting.

Response from the City of Minneapolis to a question about historic parking regulations.

While I’d prefer to live in a city with fewer full-time drivers, I fully acknowledge their existence. Likewise, this proposed policy change accommodates the reality of car ownership. However, what Minneapolis’ existing parking mandate does not do is acknowledge the existence of people who live without a personal automobile. Residential parking regulations are levied against them, like a tax. It’s illegal for developers to cater to them.

A socio-economically diverse city should have parking regulations that actually accommodate diversity. Parking has a cost; it’s as much “for sale” as a hanging hot tub or water stairs. We shouldn’t mandate residential parking in a way that eliminates choice and ignores the needs of so many Minneapolis renters and buyers. On parking, let the market decide.***
* More parking minimum analogies: it’s like a TV/VCR combo; it’s like an apartment with bundled cable TV when you just wanna stream it over the internet; it’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife; it’s like meeting the man of my dreams, and then meeting his beautiful wife.
** Bernie should be talking about this.
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Constituent Emails

You may remember the agitated gentleman from a few months ago who emailed me a PDF of my own Tweets. Now that I’m an elected public official, I have set up an email filter to clear my inbox of all messages not containing the phrase “you’re a hero” (I will still be accepting your vitriol via Tweet, however).

From: Actual Constituent 

To: John Edwards 

Wednesday, June 17, 2015 at 11:01 PM 

You’re a hero to attend such meetings. Hang in there!

I don’t understand why LHENA board thinks we need cops on bikes? Who can explain? or is it an attempt to get at something else, i.e. more interaction with the public. Sorry, but I just don’t know about crime in LHENA. Or maybe the current board just can’t think of any way to use its money for neighborhood stuff like a youth development program, home maintenance for seniors, community gardens, a database of miscreant landlords. I could go on.

Thank you for your support. The MPD issue is tricky. It’s a delicate balance between my pro-crime and pro-bike agendas. I’m glad you approve of my approach. As for your other concerns: I pledge to get a handle on our neighborhood’s youths, seniors, plants, and miscreants by the end of my first 90 days. And I’m gonna do it without raising taxes. I’ve got a team of volunteer coders working on a “miscreant database” as I write this.

Kristina, via social media, writes: “so what was up with lt edwards?”

You’re right, Kristina, that was a confusing series of Tweets. Let me clarify. Lt. Edwards (no relation) was at last week’s Board meeting to talk about a plan, proposed by LHENA’s Crime Committee, to pay for MPD bike patrols. Lt. Edwards got a glowing introduction from the 5th Precinct’s Inspector, which included repeated use of the phrase, “Lt. Edwards is fantastic.”

Board President Leslie Foreman then introduced him as Sgt. Edwards, prompting the entire room to simultaneously conceive of the same joke: “Don’t demote Lt. Edwards!” It was the most fun LHENA has seen in a while. Lt. Edwards then good-naturedly expressed his concern with our time management (fair point, L.T.).

Lt Edwards is fantastic.

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) June 18, 2015

Don’t demote Lt Edwards.

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) June 18, 2015

Lt Edwards is like damn, guys, it’s 835. This was supposed to be over at 830.

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) June 18, 2015

While Lt. Edwards is fantastic, he wasn’t fantastic enough to convince the Board to vote for the patrols. It appears a decision on any plan for MPD patrols has been put off until next year.

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29th Street: Interpreting the Open Streets Experience

View from the LHENA tent at Open Streets on Lyndale Ave.

It’s been an interesting first two months on the job as a LHENA Board Member. Many blog posts have gone unwritten, while others have been drafted only to remain unpublished. Some observers have speculated that I’m saving material for a political autobiography (rumored title: Eyewitness to Power: God, Guns, Grits, Gravy, and Screenshots).

But really, it would be a disservice to my constituents if I stopped doing the communicating that helped me win a landslide tie for sixth place. Of course, I’ll have to modulate my tone. For example, I may start using phrases like “my esteemed colleagues” as a way to soften the blow felt by my esteemed colleagues when I dismiss their ideas. Comity before comedy, I always say.

At last week’s Board meeting, I heard from a colleague that the planned 29th Street makeover was met with an unenthusiastic reception at the LHENA tent at Open Streets on Lyndale. I’ve also heard that the neighborhood has been ignored, and that the process for seeking public input has been inadequate. I felt this was too silly a point to bother bickering over at the time, but just silly enough for a blog post/constituent update.

The Open Streets comment was a surprise to me, as someone who worked the LHENA tent that day. The first thing you should know about the experience at Open Streets is that LHENA’s big, beautiful, professional-looking “Wedge” banner had everyone thinking we were the Wedge Co-op. I spent a lot of time providing customer service to shoppers in search of food items with names I have never heard before (fundraising opportunity for next year: Cub foods at Wedge prices).

We did finally come across a young woman claiming to be a resident. She was so enthusiastic about getting involved with her new neighborhood. In the excitement, I immediately gave her a “Wedge Walk Patrol” hat, without checking ID or making her play a silly game. After she departed, we noticed the address she left on the signup sheet was in the Lyndale neighborhood. She’s probably somewhere right now impersonating a member of the Wedge Walk Patrol, making unlawful arrests.

Seen a Lyndale resident wearing this hat? Report her to the Wedge Walk Patrol.

Then there was the surly mom who seemed to hate everything we were doing. She had a hugely negative reaction to all the options on our Mueller Park survey, one of which was “staffing the pool so babies don’t drown.” If we’re using the feedback we received at Open Streets to draw conclusions, our primary takeaways might be that hardly anybody knows who we are, and Wedge moms have a deep hatred for all things LHENA (not a scientific survey of Wedge moms).

So while feedback may have been sparse, the suggestion that a bunch of Open Streets attendees are skeptical of remaking a pot-holed mess into something attractive, useful, and pedestrian- and bike-friendly is odd. As is the idea that this has been forced on us, under the radar. Though I won’t deny, at multiple LHENA meetings over the last 12 months, I’ve been put to sleep by Lisa Bender’s relentless droning about 29th Street, leaving me unable to remember key details of her secret plan.

There’s been plenty of time to bang the drum if anyone thought the neighborhood’s concerns for 29th weren’t being addressed. There were three public meetings last year (I walked to two of them from my home; other LHENA honchos were there as well). Aside from complaints about process, I’m not sure what the substantive objections/critiques are. If you happen to have any, there’s one last meeting scheduled for June 29th.

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Draft of LHE Historic District Study

We have obtained a draft of the Lowry Hill East Residential Historic District designation study. Is your house “contributing” or “non-contributing”? It’s time to start judging your neighbors.

Here’s a neat detail. There are a cluster of houses on Bryant Ave (2415, 2417, 2420, 2424, 2425) possibly built as duplexes, which are now single-family homes. LHENA tried to downzone a few of those addresses from R2 (two-family) to R1 (single-family) in the great rezoning battle of 2004. This must have been upsetting to our neighborhood’s “Healy originalists” who prefer to interpret zoning as the Master Builder intended.

1899: Healy builds duplex. Anon pamphleteer says: “Greedy developer. No respect for our n’hood of single fam homes.” pic.twitter.com/UNn8hh9Mgk

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) May 9, 2015

I can clarify some uncertainty regarding features of the very interesting house at 2404 Colfax:

It is not clear if the fence dates to the period of significance. Also, the decorative spindle work and bargeboard are very unusual to see in a Colonial Revival house. While there are no specific building permit references to this element of the design, it is not clear if this dates to the period of significance.

As first reported by the Wedge newspaper, Bob and Jeanie McAloon built that fence (and other stuff) in nineteen hundred and ninety-three.

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The Linden Hills Model

(This is a followup to my previous post)

Aside from a few highly restrictive organizations, becoming a candidate for a leadership position in most Minneapolis neighborhoods couldn’t be easier (as my own biggest fan, I recently had the pleasure of nominating myself). Voting, however, is unnecessarily burdensome.

In Lowry Hill East, which has a fairly typical process, the election happens around 8 p.m. Nominations are followed by speeches. Then ballots are filled and submitted over the next few minutes. If you can’t be present during those few minutes on that particular day, for whatever reason, you don’t get to vote. And don’t forget your ID, because you’ll be asked for it.

This is a recipe for low turnout. This process creates barriers for people with limited time or hectic schedules: parents with young children; those who work outside a traditional nine-to-five window; or people who, after a long winter, are desperate to spend a pleasant evening at a baseball game (this last one cost me a whole lotta votes).

Rather than develop my own solution for this problem, I found a template: the Linden Hills Neighborhood Council bylaws (see section 5). Their absentee voting process allows for much more voting (much, much more). Candidates must be nominated at least seven days before the annual meeting. Nominations can be submitted by email, and ballots can be printed at home.

This process provides residents the opportunity for five days of absentee voting. That’s 120 hours of voting in Linden Hills, compared to mere minutes of voting in my (very typical) neighborhood. Linden Hills has also dispensed with a voter-ID requirement, opting instead to require voters to put their name and address on their ballot.

120 hours of voting and no voter-ID requirement for Linden Hills residents.

High-renter and/or high-minority neighborhoods are the most likely to have very restrictive electoral procedures. This is one of the things I found when I looked at the bylaws of 70 Minneapolis neighborhood associations. And in the case of Linden Hills, we have a neighborhood with a large majority of white (85%) homeowners (67%), making voting as easy as possible for their residents. This is not a coincidence.

Getting people to participate in their neighborhood association is hard enough, even when targeting those already highly engaged and interested in local issues. I recently spent quite a bit of time trying to convince friends, friends of friends, and friends with babies, to give up hours of their lives to put me on the Board of an organization they barely knew existed. It’s a lot to ask. I feel guilty/grateful for their help.

There’s no good reason your neighborhood association’s electoral process should be exponentially harder than voting for Mayor or President. At a time when unrepresentative neighborhood groups are making headlines, we should be eager to remove these barriers.
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Political Participation Rates in Lowry Hill East

There’s been a lot of recent discussion about who leads Minneapolis’ neighborhood organizations. As in, are they diverse enough? This is an important question. But we should also be asking who and how many are voting for those leaders. We don’t have an answer for the who (I would advocate for a simple demographic survey for annual meeting attendees). But, in a first-of-its-kind analysis of never-before-cared-about numbers, we can finally tell you how many.
Minneapolis election data available here.


To give an idea of the universe of politically engaged residents, I have listed neighborhood turnout for mid-term and off-year elections (famously low turnout). It should be noted that LHENA’s 2015 election was particularly well-contested. There were two distinct, motivated factions and lots of candidates (15). People tell me that in other neighborhoods, great leaders are the ones who grudgingly say, “Fine, I’ll do it.” Not so in the Wedge! Selecting who stands between our neighborhood and annihilation is serious business.

Which is all to say, this might be a comparatively optimistic model of neighborhood association participation, rather than a typical example of what happens citywide. When reached for comment about low participation rates, newly elected (maybe?) LHENA Board Member John Edwards said, “If we want to claim a mandate from our neighborhood’s nearly 7,000 residents, we should look to find ways to make ourselves more relevant, and participation less of a burden.” [full disclosure: John Edwards is the owner of this blogspot and the author of this post]

Methodology: The number of LHENA voters are estimates I’ve seen reported by Board Members; these estimates are consistent with my own experience. In the case of 2015, a look at the actual vote totals indicates that 125 may be an overestimate: 792 votes / 7 votes per person = ~114 ballots cast (I’m sure there were undervotes and a few un-tallied write-ins for Nicole Curtis).

Though voting at LHENA does not require you to be a registered Minnesota voter, it’s a better baseline than “All Residents” for the number of people who might conceivably want to include themselves in the political process. In calculating LHENA turnout, total registered voters are from the previous November’s city/state/federal election.
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New Winner Declared After LHENA Election Recount

A series of email requests for vote totals from a @WedgeLIVE Senior Producer was followed by an official recount, bringing a change in results from April 15th’s LHENA Board election. Jono Cowgill, who had previously trailed by two votes for the final two-year term, gained enough votes in a recount process to be declared a winner on Sunday.

There is now a tie for the sixth and final two-year term, between Sara Romanishan and John Edwards (me). As the LHENA bylaws do not specify a formal tie-breaking procedure, President Foreman has called for a community vote on May 20, at 6 pm, to decide whether to add an additional seat to the Board of Directors. President Foreman notified me on Sunday morning that she was rescinding my LHENA-provided security detail pending a bylaw change.

The rule of thumb for recounts is that the candidate with the most transient/lazy/uneducated supporters will gain votes. It’s possible that some of Mr. Cowgill’s Millennial voters marked their ballots using emojis, which may have confused vote counters. Another rule of thumb about recounts is that winners do not request them (we’re currently looking for a new @WedgeLIVE Senior Producer).

We leave it to the League of Women Voters to interpret this ballot.

The official announcement from LHENA’s President:

Because our recent LHENA board election was so extremely close, LHENA staff recommended a recount of the ballots. We asked the League of Women Voters and Neighborhood and Community Relations to assist us in a recount which was completed earlier this week.

The recount resulted in a change to the board membership.

Jono Cowgill is a new board member. Welcome Jono!

Saralyn Romanishan and John Edwards tied for the remaining board seat.

LHENA bylaws have no stated policies in terms of what to do in the case of a tie.

In order to come to a speedy resolution, I would like to call a special meeting of the members to meet before our next board meeting on Wednesday May 20th at 6:00pm at Jefferson School Media Center, for the purpose of adding one two-year term board seat bringing the total board membership up to 12 members. This would allow for both John and Sara to be on the board.

After the special meeting, the board will meet for the regular monthly board meeting and elect officers.

I am excited to harness the talent and energy of the new and the returning board members.

The Lowry HIll East Neighborhood Association encourages the participation of all residents.

The results of the recount supervised by the League of Women Voters are:

2 Year Term – six seats open

Katie Jones Schmitt – 82 – Board Seat
Beth Harrington – 61 – Board Seat
Paul Ryan – 58 – Board Seat
Michael Friedman – 56 – Board Seat
Jono Cowgill – 55 – Board Seat
John Edwards – 54  Tie
Saralyn Romanishan – 54 Tie
Nathan Jorgenson – 52
Sue Bode- 49
Ryan Goeken – 46
Mark Greenwald – 45
Jeff Juul – 41
Erik Ernst – 37 

One Year Term – one seat open

Frank Brown – 53 – Board Seat
Scott Hargarten – 49

Thank you.

Leslie Foreman
President
Lowry Hill East Neighborhood Association

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Annual Meeting Brings Change, Raises Questions

Council Member Lisa Bender speaks at LHENA’s 2015 annual meeting.

Last week, in an effort to get others elected to LHENA’s Board of Directors, I failed miserably and got myself elected instead. Turnout was surprisingly high. I thought we were doomed, but strange new faces began arriving later in the evening, closer to the advertised election time, providing hope.

A lady in the front row was moved to ask if candidates would be required to announce their homeowner/renter status (that was weird). The composition of the room affected one incumbent, whose speech turned into a concession, with a reference to her age being a political handicap. But in the end, we were still kind of doomed. Demographics weren’t favorable enough. I blame baseball, amazing weather, and cool kids with better things to do.

In an attempt to bring the neighborhood together, new LHENA Board Member @johneapolis has asked to be sworn in on Healy’s copy of the Koran.
— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) April 17, 2015

Last week’s election also raises some questions.

1. Why? I ask myself the same question.

2. Was Meg giving you dirty looks the whole evening? You’re just paranoid.

3. What do you consider to be your campaign’s “Game Change” moment? Had to be when a group of older gentlemen got a hold of our slate of candidates and started passing around a handwritten list of names. It probably didn’t cost us any votes, but it was funny.

4. What happens to your social media empire? Financial managers have placed my entire stake in wedgelive.com and @WedgeLIVE into a blind trust. While I will continue to own 100% of this blogspot, I will have no idea that this is the case.

5. Will you continue to live-tweet LHENA Board meetings? My new circumstances likely make high-volume live-tweeting a thing of the past. That doesn’t mean there won’t be breaking news to report from time to time.

6. When are you moving to Whittier? My lease is up in September… Just kidding. I pledge to serve my entire term, and grow enough gray hairs by the end of those two stress-filled years to pass for a long-time resident.

7. Your political role model? Marco Rubio. I’m prepared to be the young-ish, mediocre, political hotshot on the receiving end of overly generous descriptions, such as “good looking” and “articulate” and “has hair” and “makes words with his mouth.”

8. What details are important to preserve for historians looking back 45 years from now?

Seven LHENA Board seats were up for grabs in 2015. They included seats held by the following: Michael Roden, Sara Romanishan, Sue Bode, Paul Ryan, Kyle Kilbourn, Shae Walker, and Burt Coffin. There were roughly 15 candidates to fill those seats.

Re-elected were Sara Romanishan and Paul Ryan. Sue Bode came up short. Michael Roden was lost to transiency. Kyle, Shae and Burt retired to become lobbyists probably. LHENA’s five new Board Members are: Michael Friedman, Frank Brown, Beth Harrington, Katie Jones-Schmitt, and John Edwards. They join Leslie Foreman, Tim Dray, Bill Neumann, and Becky Dernbach on the 11 member Board. Those four will be up for re-election in 2016, along with the seat of Frank Brown, who was elected to a one-year term.

Update: “New Winner Declared After LHENA Election Recount”

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Yard Sign Report: The Forgotten South Wedge Transient District

One of 11 LHENA yard signs.
As part of our non-stop, team coverage of the upcoming LHENA election and annual meeting, I hopped on a bike to map the location of promotional yard signs.

Analysis: The North Wedge Historic District has a whole lotta yard signs. Meanwhile, in the South Wedge Transient District there are many fewer yard signs. Experts say this could lead to fewer people of South Wedge descent being aware of the annual meeting, or knowing that LHENA exists in the first place. I’ve met more than a few South Wedge residents who thought they lived in Whittier or CARAG. Stay tuned to @WedgeLIVE to see how this impacts Wednesday’s results.

Yard sign data collected on April 11.
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The Historic Wedge Newspaper

Two of the early hand-drawn front pages.

Last fall, the @WedgeLIVE news team spent an insane number of hours in the remarkably luxurious and well-equipped Special Collections room of the Minneapolis Central Library, doing what no one else thought possible or necessary: scanning nearly 40 years of the Wedge neighborhood newspaper going back to 1970.

Now that I’ve mined it for all the blog material it was worth (and used up all the old unredeemed coupons for Tuthill’s General Store), we’re releasing it to the neighborhood. Check out the archive. It’s more historic than a Healy house.

Print it out. Denny may still be legally bound to honor this coupon.

Many talented and dedicated people put a lot of work into this paper over the last 45 years. It’s an amazing resource. But if you’re too lazy to lift a finger to browse the full archive (I’m looking at you, renters), I’ve condensed decades of accumulated neighborhood knowledge to a manageable number of bullet points.

Alright “Ken”–you say your last name ends in a chant of “USA”? We’re not buying it.

  • “The Wedgies” was a cartoon featuring a Wedge-shaped married couple (unfortunately, not a continuing series).
Next panel: “That’s not a hotel, it’s a former boarding house you converted to single-family. You owe me $200 for historic repairs.”

  • This old political ad fills me with transient pride. Who needs a wife and kids when you can tout your amazing “roommate”? This goes both for euphemistic and platonic roommates. 

Recycle this into a historic Christmas card.

The Wedge newspaper archive is brought to you by Homemade Soups™.