Category: Uncategorized

(Part I of II)

A meeting of the Whittier Alliance neighborhood organization was overrun on Monday by a group of Wedge residents eager to voice concerns over a proposed bikeway on 24th Street.

Staff from the city’s Public Works Department found it hard to even begin their presentation, as former Council Member Meg Tuthill — notorious “Nazi Lane” protester, accompanied by about a dozen energized loyalists from the Wedge — interrupted the introduction by snapping “first of all, who are you?”

Tuthill at left, participating in “Nazi Lane” protest.

Tuthill, who was defeated by Lisa Bender 64 percent to 30 percent in 2013, tag-teamed the meeting with another former Minneapolis elected official, Audrey Johnson. Johnson, a former school board member, is known for hurling insults (“Bendrification”) at Lisa Bender while giving public testimony at the City Planning Commission.

The Wedge contingent interrupted, sidetracked, and generally monopolized the discussion, in a way that reminded me of every poorly conducted Wedge neighborhood (LHENA) meeting I’ve been to over the years. Also in attendance was the Tuthill-endorsed city council candidate who lost to Lisa Bender 64 percent to 20 percent in last week’s city election. Yes, the meeting felt like an extension of election season.

Prior to the start of the Public Works presentation, State Rep Karen Clark conducted a (non-bike) Q&A that went on longer than expected. Audrey Johnson, seeming like she couldn’t wait to lay the hammer down on Lisa Bender, peppered Clark with questions about the city’s rental vacancy rate. Johnson told Clark, “we’re being lied to” by the city council, in order to justify the construction of more housing.

The primary concern expressed about a potential bikeway was parking. One person said the parking study was not valid because it happened in July when people are out of town. Another said the study wasn’t done at the right times of day. Another wanted the bikeway on 25th Street (an option that would remove more parking). Other attendees said they were unhappy that this would be the only public meeting (in reality, there was a meeting two months ago, and more meetings will happen next month).

Other concerns included, but nobody bikes, and sure, we all bike, but what about winter?

The Q&A, which turned into an unproductive bike-gripe session, was cut off so that the meeting could move to the next agenda item. As Public Works staff exited the room, they were pursued and pinned down for more questions in the lobby by Tuthill and company.

Meg and co have cornered public works staff in the lobby as they were leaving, as Whittier Alliance meeting continues in the other room. pic.twitter.com/7eENQORhU8

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) November 14, 2017

Left unheard were many other bike lane supporters and skeptics in the room, both groups deprived of a meaningful opportunity for feedback or understanding of the project.

It should be mentioned that the 24th Street bikeway has been a part of the city’s Bicycle Master Plan since 2011. Meg Tuthill served on the city council that adopted the bike plan seven years ago, and according to meeting minutes it was passed on a voice vote without her objection.

Read part II: Meg Tuthill: What About Her Emails?

If you’d like to comment on the 24th St bikeway project, contact Virginie Nadimi, virginie.nadimi@minneapolismn.gov.

We’ve come to the end of a long, weird, grueling election season. I’ve had some days off. The team is newly invigorated.

We’re pleased that Tom Hoch wasted an unprecedented amount of his own money not becoming the next mayor of Minneapolis. My pumpkin, Mayor Betsy Hodges, is off to the compost bin. And the actual Betsy Hodges is probably planning a Hawaiian vacation. No more Barb, no more Blong — a striking change in leadership for north Minneapolis. John Quincy lost his seat in Ward 11, and on the bright side, I imagine he probably never had strong feelings either way about that.

As we contemplate the transition from one city council to another in 2018, we’re declaring this “Wedge to the MAX Week.” Our work is not sustainable without your support. Getting to 200 total subscribers is the next step. If you value what Wedge LIVE! adds to the local conversation, please subscribe on Patreon.

You can send a message that you’re serious about us doing serious coverage in 2018. Seriously!

Did you know 32% of the Wedge LIVE! audience is millionaires? That’s what Twitter says. Twitter don’t lie. So pony up, cheapskates. It’s time to Wedge to the MAX. Subscribe today!

Finally, a sincere thanks to all our existing subscribers! You’re amazing. Anyone who says people won’t support hyperlocal news with real dollars is a liar. (And if Carol Becker is reading this, I want to make it clear that not a dollar of subscriber money was spent on my vanity write-in campaign for Board of Estimate and Taxation. Call off the lawyers, Carol.)

Minneapolis City Council c/o 2017 with Mayor-elect Frey (in crown)

Our municipal elections are over and the biggest story nobody can see happening is the race to become president of the Minneapolis City Council in 2018. Newly elected members won’t be sworn in for two months, but the behind the scenes discussions, jockeying and waffling is happening right now. Four years ago, in 2013/2014, we didn’t get the full story until late January, weeks after it was officially settled.

The process for electing the new council president is by majority vote of the 13 members of the new city council in January following an election. Once elected, the president has the authority to assign council members to the various committees, and appoint committee chairs. This fact alone makes it an extremely powerful position.

It’s the first big way our new council, with five new members, could change how City Hall operates over the next four years. In conversations with City Hall observers and insiders, two committees are often mentioned as particularly important centers of money and power: Community Development & Regulatory Services, chaired currently by Lisa Goodman; and Transportation and Public Works, chaired currently by Kevin Reich.

Another thing to watch for in January: committees can be newly created, combined, or split apart. A combining of committees happened at the beginning of the last council term in 2014.

Council Member Lisa Goodman won more power under the new structure. Goodman’s community development committee, which oversees the use of housing funds and steers economic development initiatives, now includes regulatory services.

To give a hypothetical example of the kind of thing that could happen in January, “Community Development” could again be split apart from “Regulatory Services” with new chairs for one or both committees.

For the sake of discussing how this could all end up, let’s begin by characterizing the existing council factions as “Team Barb” and “Team Not Barb” (both teams receiving their names courtesy of soon-to-be-former Council President Barb Johnson). Team Barb is the more conservative side of the council, with Team Not Barb on the more progressive side.

Team Barb (8)

• Kevin Reich
• Jacob Frey (Mayor-elect)
• Barb Johnson (President, defeated)
• Blong Yang (defeated)
• Abdi Warsame
• Lisa Goodman
• John Quincy (defeated)
• Linea Palmisano

Team Not Barb (5)

• Cam Gordon
• Elizabeth Glidden (retired)
• Alondra Cano
• Lisa Bender
• Andrew Johnson

After last week’s election, the council’s more progressive “Team Not Barb” will become newly empowered in 2018, adding the five new members listed below (which makes for a nine member majority on the council of 13):

• Steve Fletcher
• Phillipe Cunningham
• Jeremiah Ellison
• Andrea Jenkins
• Jeremy Schroeder

There’s no guarantee that this group holds together as a bloc exactly as listed above, but it’s likely that the new council president will emerge from among the incumbents in the new progressive majority. Of course there’s always the possibility for unconventional alliances, as when Alondra Cano disappointed many of her most ardent supporters by backing Jacob Frey for mayor.

If you appreciate what we contribute to the local conversation, help us get to 200 subscribers on Patreon. Support Wedge LIVE during Wedge to the MAX Week!

Conventional wisdom says incumbent John Quincy is a goner in Ward 11. The Star Tribune would not have endorsed against him if they thought he had a chance of surviving this election. Which means Ward 11 will likely have a new city council member come 2018.

I’ve been observing Quincy’s challengers all year long, and I believe both would immediately become excellent council members, and clear upgrades over the incumbent.

What separates Erica Mauter from most other candidates is her willingness to say true things that are hard for people to hear. That’s a big reason why Ward 11 voters should make Mauter their number one choice on November 7.

Mauter has been the most bluntly honest about the need for reforms that chip away at the exclusionary zoning practices that keep small and midscale multi-family housing out of single-family neighborhoods (her support for triplexes and easing parking minimums earned her the rebuke of the Star Tribune editorial board). You also see this political courage when Mauter very directly makes the case for equity to the largely white residents of Ward 11.

One thing that all the council candidates I’m endorsing this year have in common: they are courageous and impressively wonky. Erica Mauter checks both boxes. I’ve seen it myself and I hear it from others. People I respect who work side by side with Mauter on policy issues tell me she knows her stuff and works hard, standing out from her colleagues. She has lived up to this praise when I’ve seen her in person at candidate forums.

Jeremy Schroeder is the other challenger in Ward 11. You should rank Schroeder second on your ballot. He is an excellent candidate and has run an impressive campaign.

At some point, far into the future, when I give talks to classrooms full of aspiring journalists, I will tell them you miss 100% of the weird stories you don’t show up for. That’s why you go to all the neighborhood meetings, all the zoning hearings, and every candidate forum.

You go to a Ward 7 city council candidate forum at a big fancy church on Hennepin Avenue to break a once-in-a-lifetime story that a not-so-clever person might call Gumghazi.

(What you’re about to read is the biggest Wedge LIVE scoop since Deflate-gate.)

Multiple eyewitness accounts and the pictures below show that Lisa Goodman placed chewing gum from her mouth into the hand of one of her opponents. Poor guy thought when Goodman said “take my gum” that she was offering a nicely wrapped piece of unchewed gum. Live and learn. The unlucky political neophyte, Teqen Zéa-Aida, won’t fall for the old gum trick again. Experience matters. (Read Teqen’s account here.)

Meg Tuthill works the room 
Former Ward 10 city council member, Meg Tuthill—who is a Goodman supporter—walked around the room before the candidate forum, doing some persuasion work. Tuthill interrogated a couple of sweet, innocent older ladies about who they were supporting and why. The innocent older ladies said they were supporting Goodman’s other opponent Janne Flisrand.

My close encounter with Lisa Goodman (Kingpin Wedge “El Chapo” LIVÉ escapes Mexican prison once again)

Here’s another Real-Life Story from the Ward 7 Candidate Forum. After it was all over (after all the gum had been chewed and spit out into other people’s hands), I stood up and began talking to the tall, handsome man I was seated next to during the 90-minute forum. To my great terror, Lisa Goodman approaches us and asks the tall man, “are you John?” Clearly she was confusing one tall handsome man for another.

Lucky for me, Lisa Goodman had her sights locked on my friend, convinced that this was the “John” she was looking for. But he was not John. I am John. And at that moment, John (me) was making his escape.

It’s no accident that not driving is still the hardest way to get around Minneapolis. More than half a century’s worth of decisions by local officials have led to a city designed primarily to serve automobile traffic. This has created neighborhood streets that inconvenience and threaten the safety of anyone not traveling in a car. It’s a destructive trend that, despite recent victories on bike lanes and parking reform, hasn’t yet reversed itself.

Alex Cecchini, an expert who has written smart things for streets.mn, thinks we could be doing more to make not driving easier: “On one hand, biking and transit are easier and less scary than your regular suburban commuter assumes. On the other, it really is way more complicated and shitty than it needs to be.”

Biking / transit require more physical activity than driving, interrupting the planned atrophy of my muscles.

— Jeff (@j3effcSTP) September 3, 2017

Too Many Cars, Not Enough Buses

Whittier resident Mike Beck says local buses are crowded and don’t come frequently enough. On the way home from his son’s football game, he says, “the bus was so crowded, I had to stand.” And when he attempted to transfer to a second bus, the wait was so long he decided to walk 13 blocks home.

Residents like Sam Jones of Stevens Square place some of the blame on the sheer number of cars clogging city streets. After a long train ride from Chicago, Jones says he was deprived of a bus ride home by “suburban dad traffic” that jammed downtown streets following the conclusion of a teen-oriented pop concert.

He says he waited for an hour in the rain, “even though there are four routes that directly connect my neighborhood to the Hennepin LRT station, three of them high frequency.”

Saturday standing on the 5. This is my not-driving horror story. @StarTribune pic.twitter.com/CuLSAlCINx

— Wedge LIVE! (@WedgeLIVE) September 9, 2017

Rising Costs

Not only is sharing road space with cars a major inconvenience and potentially dangerous, but it can also be costly, as Adam Miller found out when “a car backed into me in the Portland bike lane and I had to walk to [the bike shop] for a new front wheel.”

For bike commuter Nicky of Elliot Park, a lack of secure bike parking means their transportation costs are on the rise, in the form of repairs and replacement parts.

They describe having to “lift my bike up off the sidewalk about 3 feet to lock it to the fence every single day. I have to use 2 locks, because my front wheel got stolen from this insecure location a few months ago, so I lock the frame and rear with one u-lock, and the front to the frame with a second u-lock. And, it’s not covered, so my components are rusting fast thanks to our increasing rainfall levels.”

Cost will soon rise for transit riders as well, with Metro Transit set to increase fares by 25 cents on Oct. 1, with no increase in service. This is due to the GOP-controlled state legislature’s refusal to fund transit at an adequate level.

Concerns for Safety and Comfort

In addition to the usual safety concerns a person might have walking, biking or taking transit–including from drivers distracted by cell phones or from streets designed as high-speed thoroughfares–non-drivers also contend with aggressive behavior and outright harassment on their commutes.

“People have shouted slurs at me numerous times walking,” says Ryan Johnson of Prospect Park.

“Pretty sure I was about to get assaulted once in Northeast, but the bus arrived at the right time,” he said. “Things like that make me prefer to bike so I can GTFO fast, but then obviously, no escaping assholes in trucks. My former roommate had numerous experiences where drivers would road rage and shout slurs because he didn’t seem straight enough while biking.”

Perhaps more disturbing than street harassment is the mental anguish I have personally experienced reading comments on the nextdoor website from people pretending that a new bike lane has delayed their car trip by 30 minutes.

Rider comments via Transit App show not-driving is harder than it should be

Misplaced Priorities

With all the danger, discomfort and inconvenience they face on their commutes, non-drivers sometimes laugh at the parking concerns like those of a suburban lawyer who’d rather drive to work downtown than take an express bus. He makes this choice even though not driving would cut his parking expenses by $1,500 annually and get him to work in the same amount of time. Most city-dwelling transit riders would be fortunate to have a bus commute anywhere near as speedy as a car trip.

Noted guy in the Wedge, John Edwards, who is writing this blog post right now, asks, “Why exactly should a car get to live downtown rent-free for a year? We seem to understand that real estate has value as a place for people or businesses, but too many people think land stops having value the moment someone wants to park a car on it.”

Some residents make arguments that because biking or transit is harder than driving, we should double down on the automobile-centered design of our city. This only perpetuates the problems, says Edwards, guy who has read the comments on the nextdoor website (editor’s note: I am John Edwards).

“People say we should forget bike lanes that make it safer for people to commute by bike because it feels like their commute might be slower,” Edwards observed. “They point to a lack of adequate transit as the reason we should layer our cities with as much free parking as possible, instead of pushing for policies that make better transit viable. This is largely concern-trolling from comfortable people averse to small changes.”

Considering (1) the hazard cars pose to people and the environment; (2) the cost that free parking adds to the price of housing and other things we buy; and (3) the opportunity cost of land we dedicate to parking not serving some other, more productive use; driving remains embarrassingly cheap and easy.

If you believe in the kind of journalism where a reporter isn’t afraid to quote himself in his own story, support Wedge LIVE! on Patreon.

It’s pretty sad that you care about this llama dressed as a biker more than you care about the city council election.

I wrote a whole thing about the mayor’s race, and I hope you didn’t read it. Don’t let establishment media figures like myself use the mayoral sideshow to distract you from what matters in 2017. I’m here to tell you: the mayor’s race is a false flag.

MAYORAL UPDATE: Carol Becker’s dumb lawsuit against Mayor Hodges goes up in flames; Carol Becker declares victory, says “Judge agrees with me.”

City council races are by far the most consequential elections happening in Minneapolis this year. Minneapolis has a weak mayor system. The biggest thing at stake this year is whether we return in 2018 with Team Barb running the council. There’s a vast difference between a council majority led by a President Barb vs a President Bender (to use a wildly random example).

What you do as an individual over the next two months matters. Here’s why. There were only 3,621 ballots cast in Ward 5 in 2013 (the lowest turnout in Minneapolis). How many voters can you bring to the polls by volunteering for the next two months? Easily enough to tip the balance, even in higher turnout wards.

City council elections are hyperlocal battles: neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, person by person. Pick a competitive city council race to volunteer for—right now—while there’s still time to make a difference. If your city council ward isn’t competitive, find a candidate in another ward to volunteer for/donate to. (Find your ward here)

Below is a list of campaigns in pivotal “swing” wards. The incumbents in these wards all pledged allegiance to Barb after the 2013 election.

Where to Help in 2017

Ward 1 (5,942 ballots cast in 2013)
Incumbent: Kevin Reich 👎👎👎👎
Bio: Tool of Barb.

Challengers
Jillia Pessenda: website / volunteer / donate
John Hayden: website / volunteer / donate

Ward 4 (3,940 ballots cast in 2013)
Incumbent: Barb Johnson 👎👎👎👎👎
Bio: Council President; thinks garage apartments cause prostitution.

Challengers
Phillipe Cunningham: website / volunteer / donate
Stephanie Gasca: website / volunteer / donate

Ward 5 (3,621 ballots cast in 2013)
Incumbent: Blong Yang 👎👎👎👎
Bio: Endless whining; seems to hate his job; pretending to be DFL.

Challengers
Jeremiah Ellison: website / volunteer / donate
Raeisha Williams: website / volunteer / donate

Ward 7 (6,594 ballots cast in 2013)
Incumbent: Lisa Goodman 👎👎👎👎👎
Bio: Stands against all that is good.

Challengers
Janne Flisrand: website / volunteer / donate
Teqen Zea-Aida: website / volunteer / donate

Ward 11 (7,494 ballots cast in 2013)
Incumbent: John Quincy 👎👎👎
Bio: Finger in the wind.

Challengers
Erica Mauter: website / volunteer / donate
Jeremy Schroeder: website / volunteer / donate

INCUMBENT RANKINGS
👎 – Not Great
👎👎 – Oof
👎👎👎 – Bad
👎👎👎👎 – Pretty Bad
👎👎👎👎👎 – The Worst

FAQ: Are you endorsing these challengers? These are not endorsements; these are only ideas for where your volunteer time or donations could be prioritized if you are so inclined. (You are welcome to spend your time volunteering for Barb or Lisa Goodman. But I can’t find links that would allow a regular person to volunteer for Barb or Lisa Goodman.)

FAQ: Shouldn’t we focus energy on one challenger per ward? Ranked choice voting is a thing! Splitting the vote between a few challengers doesn’t automatically accrue to the benefit of an incumbent.

FAQ: I still don’t know which candidate to help. Send me a DM or email, and I will help guide you to the right candidate.

FAQ: Where can I find a complete list of candidates on the ballot in Minneapolis this year? Right here.

FAQ: How do I donate to Barb? I refuse to help Barb pay for her cable TV, internet, landline and cell phone service by linking to her donate page.

FAQ: Is it true that Wedge LIVE is conducting a write-in campaign against Carol Becker? Yes it’s true! Instead of voting for Carol Becker, please write in “Wedge LIVE” on your ballot for Board of Estimate and Taxation.

Register to vote.

Key dates:

Upcoming city council candidate forums:
Ward 1: Sept 13
Ward 3: Sept 6 / Sept 18
Ward 4: Sept 14 / Oct 3
Ward 7: Sept 6 / Sept 19 / Sept 25 / Sept 28
Ward 8: Oct 4
Ward 9: Sept 9 / Sept 19
Ward 11: Sept 21