The Wedge Times-Picayune

July 26, 2023July 26, 2023

Is Minneapolis back, baby?

It’s a question being asked and answered all over the local news: Is Minneapolis back? I’ll be honest, I like big events, people on sidewalks and in the streets, gathering together in ways that make city life so uniquely joyful. These essential experiences we’d been deprived of for too long are coming back. Sometimes it feels like I’m falling in love with this city all over again.

But hey, snap out of it. Wake up and smell the trauma of the last few years. The real existential question for this city remains: Does any of this mean we’re meaningfully addressing our police problem? I pose that question in the broadest sense. Whether you believe our “police problem” is the pattern of racist practices that made MPD the target of state and federal investigations for racism and brutality; or you say our police problem is that we don’t have a functioning department; or that we don’t have enough police; or that the city still lacks well-integrated alternatives to armed police.

July 17, 2023July 17, 2023

Minneapolis Behavioral Crisis Response teams win committee approval for one year extension; city staff and contractor stress importance of longer term commitment

The Minneapolis City Council’s Policy and Government Oversight Committee approved an extension through August 2024 for the city’s Behavioral Crisis Response teams. The current contract with Canopy Roots, who runs the program for the city, expires next month. Final approval of the contract extension is scheduled to come at a meeting of the full City Council on Thursday.

BCR program manager Marisa Stevenson, with Canopy Roots, said a long term contract extension was necessary as a show of commitment to the service, which would help them hire responders. She said her employees don’t know whether they’ll have jobs come mid-August. BCR teems will tentatively be available for dispatch by 911 on a 24/7 basis by the end of summer/early fall, pending the hire of one more weekend night responder.

July 13, 2023July 13, 2023

Winter sidewalk pilot programs will need funding to ensure safe routes for the 2024-2025 season

The City of Minneapolis is considering a menu of pilot programs to ensure sidewalks are clear of snow and ice during the winter months. If all five were funded, it would require $2.6 million annually. These were presented to the City Council’s Public Works Committee today. Decisions about next year’s budget will be made later this year — with Mayor Frey’s recommendations coming in August and a City Council vote to amend and approve in December.

June 21, 2023June 22, 2023

Tonight’s 6th Annual Wedge LIVE Cat Tour

***Speech embargoed until 6 pm on 6/21/2023***

June 4, 2023November 4, 2023

Tennessee-Based Scam “News” Website Gives Curious Coverage to Minneapolis City Council Race

The number one story on the Nashville-based news website TN Horn News for the last week or so has been an article headlined “Dissension Inside DSA: Minneapolis Chapter Faces Criticism For Alleged Rejection of Minority Communities, Potential Shift In direction of Republican Celebration.” The story echoes charges from Minneapolis City Council candidate Nasri Warsame that the DFL endorsement process has been tainted by unfair treatment by party officials and a crew of local socialists.

The domain tnhornnews.com was registered on May 16, three days after the Ward 10 convention was cut short by chaos instigated by Warsame supporters. The website publishes dozens of stories a day, but so far no other stories about Minneapolis local politics. Based on my extensive reading, the website’s content is stolen from popular mainstream websites. The large volume of poorly re-written stories suggests they’re using an automated process — swapping words for synonyms — in order to avoid being recognized as obvious plagiarism. But this word-swapping is so crude that it makes TN Horn News just a flood of nonsense articles.

May 2, 2023May 2, 2023

Rent Stabilization Not Getting An Honest Analysis in Minneapolis

Back on December 14, the appointed group of volunteers serving on the City of Minneapolis’s Rent Stabilization Work Group completed their work and made a recommendation. Hours later, Mayor Frey delivered his rebuttal: “It’s not happening.” And four months later, Frey’s administration presented a report to the City Council reinforcing his opposition, recommending against enacting any version of a rent stabilization policy. Under our new government structure, even when they’re doing work in service of the City Council’s legislative function, city departments answer exclusively to the Mayor.

The analysis in the staff report is narrow, focusing on competing recommendations from the city’s work group. One side of the work group was made up largely of tenant advocates pushing for a maximal rent control policy. The other faction was tilted towards landlords and developers who recommended a more lax policy. Differences between the two sides’ recommendations go well beyond just capping rents at different percentages. It’s more complicated than that.

April 25, 2023April 25, 2023

Return of the Corner Store in Minneapolis? Planning Commission Approves First Land Use Rezoning Plan Since 1999

After a nearly four hour meeting Monday night, the Planning Commission voted to expand the possibility for small scale corner stores and offices across large parts of the city. They also passed an amendment to make grocery stores viable by easing square footage maximums. The City Council takes up the issue next.

It’s been a quarter century (1999!) since the city last redefined which land uses are allowed in which places. So testimony at yesterday’s public hearing on land use rezoning took note of the “once in a generation” opportunity. It’s the last big step in bringing the city’s zoning code into compliance with the city’s 2040 comprehensive plan, adopted in 2018.

April 6, 2023April 16, 2023

Minneapolis Election Forecast: Award-Winning Pile of Money Could Be Dumped on City Hall Again in 2023

prize winning bag of money posing in front of city hall

You might remember “All of Mpls” as the group that sent a glossy photo of our old police chief to your mailbox at an irritating frequency during the 2021 election. A recent email survey sent to Minneapolis residents indicates the group may be back to dump another large pile of money on this year’s city election. And with the mayor not on the ballot, they can focus all their attention on city council.

All of Mpls spent $2.3 million in 2021, with $1.2 million coming from a separate independent expenditure campaign called “Plan for Progress.” Most of the rest of the money was made up of $5,000, $10,000, and sometimes $100,000, donations from wealthy individuals. There are no limits to the money you can donate to an independent expenditure campaign. The money was used to defeat a public safety ballot question, boost Mayor Frey, flip the city council majority to a slate of preferred candidates, and push voters to approve a new strong mayor government structure.

It was a campaign that distracted us with a promise/threat: if you vote the wrong way, say goodbye to your chief. Then the election went their way, and the chief immediately retired anyway.

August 15, 2022August 16, 2022

Which was the only part of Minneapolis to boost turnout in the DFL primary?

A lot of the primary results analysis in the Ilhan Omar vs. Don Samuels congressional race has focused on Omar’s margin differential from 2020 to 2022. And it seems to me that’s not a perfect comparison — considering 2020 was a monumental presidential election, with much higher turnout.

While she won Minneapolis with 55% of the vote, Omar was down by over 8% across the city compared to two years ago. Possible explanations abound: a relatively well-known challenger in Don Samuels, Omar’s failure to take Samuels seriously, the increasing salience of crime and police politics, and the fact that many of Omar’s progressive supporters are more likely to turn out in a presidential year.

[See Josh Martin for a breakdown of results by ward.]

The more natural comparison is midterm-to-midterm. Though the 2018 comparison also has drawbacks: Keith Ellison had just vacated the seat to run for Minnesota attorney general, so there was no incumbent. And there were more than two credible candidates.

August 8, 2022August 8, 2022

Election 2022: Try Not to Vote Your Fears This Year

As I look for deep meaning in tomorrow’s primary election, it may offer hints about how much fear is still driving local politics.

Think back to the big headline of last year’s election: the public safety charter question. It was twisted, amidst a rising crime rate, as an attempt to abolish the police. Though Mayor Frey agreed with some key elements of that charter question – creating a public safety department, and removing the minimum police staffing provision – the message from Frey’s campaign and the multi-million dollar PAC run by one of his former campaign staffers was fear. They said a yes vote would be to defund or eliminate the police department. They said a yes vote would be like demoting or firing a beloved chief (who many predicted was about to retire anyway – which he did shortly after the election).

Just a few months after he won reelection, along with a new Frey-allied City Council majority, Frey was pushing his own idea for an equivalent to a department of public safety. And that plan is moving along. Last week, the City Council confirmed his pick for Commissioner of Community Safety, a role created to integrate and oversee a handful of public safety-related departments, including the police (if I wanted to scare people, I’d tell you the chief has been demoted and won’t be able to get the mayor on the phone in an emergency). You might say it’s a shining example of what you can accomplish when you work together. Or what you can accomplish when one side isn’t fighting for political survival by spending millions of dollars scaring voters.