For today’s interview, I sought out someone with real-world experience in property ownership around Uptown. I wanted to test the claims made in Christian Heller’s May 26 Star Tribune Commentary, “Stop scapegoating homeless people for Uptown’s problems”, particularly his explanations for the area’s vacant storefronts.

Heller argued, first, that landlords are using spaces for passive speculation and that store size is part of the problem. Bruce counters that major tenants like the Kitchen Window, Urban Outfitters, and Apple were successful for years. Many attribute the subsequent vacancies to the upheaval following George Floyd’s murder, which drove away both shoppers and businesses. The mayor’s proposed “more doors” approach, subdividing larger spaces for smaller, independent retailers, sounds logical but, as Bruce explains, isn’t the solution many hope it is.

But what struck me most was Heller’s claim about affordable housing: “The property owners who hold vacant space hostage would rather use it as a tax write-off than provide stable homes for the community.” I’ve heard this refrain in progressive circles often enough, but Bruce, who has firsthand market experience, calls it unfounded. As he points out, any tax benefit a landlord receives falls far short of the losses from vacancy. It’s like spending a dollar to get back 60 cents. Yes, you could lose the entire dollar, but 40-cent losses on every dollar will still destroy your business.

The real issue, then, isn’t economics, it’s credibility. If Heller had two decades as a landlord under his belt and could explain how to profit from vacant buildings, his argument might land. Instead, the piece follows a familiar pattern: people without business experience telling those who operate in it what they should do. It mirrors a city government stocked with policy experts and nonprofit leaders who have high confidence in their ability to shape business operations, despite limited exposure to how markets actually work. That’s not an argument for excluding nonbusiness voices from government, but there’s a strong case that Minneapolis would be stronger if our leaders solicited more input from the business community and genuinely grappled with the real-world costs of the policies they pass.

Wanting to Be Positive

Tuesday morning started poorly. My wife’s urgent texts arrived during a meeting: someone had stolen our muffler overnight. She discovered it when she tried to leave for work, the noise had even woken neighbors down the block.

Later, heading to record with Bruce, I was rerouted off 28th Street. A dozen squad cars, armored vehicles, a helicopter, and what became Interim Police Chief Bill Peterson’s first crisis was unfolding. A man released from prison, a wanted fugitive, had fired on police. The lockdown lasted hours. During our interview, sirens continued and cell phone alerts went out. After we finished, the entire block where Alex Pretti was murdered remained swarmed with police. According to Star Tribune reports, the area “has been stressed for months by immigration enforcement, drug use and the rising cost of living.”

Some days in Minneapolis, staying positive takes real effort. But Bruce and I did find a few reasons for optimism. We closed discussing the bright spots Uptown has lately, less visible drug use, returning businesses, the Art Fair coming back August 7–9, and a new movie club started by Uptown United. There are wins to celebrate. On days like Tuesday, though, you have to work harder to see them clearly.

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Beshear’s record speaks for itself. According to the DFL website: “The Beshear administration has secured more than $35 billion in private sector investment, the most of any governor in state history, driving over 60,000 new full-time jobs and supporting over 1,100 new and expanded business projects. Under his leadership, Kentucky has achieved record budget surpluses and experienced historically low unemployment rates.”

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That’s a resume most governors envy. It also gives weight to his central message: Democrats need to stop using jargon like “justice-involved individuals” and start speaking “normal language,” as Paula Chesley, who attended the event, shared with us. Beshear understands the reputational damage Democrats have inflicted by importing language from sociology seminars into everyday conversation. Surveys confirm it: people dislike Trump, but they dislike Democrats even more.

The polling points to two areas where the DFL could gain traction with voters, if they develop a coherent plan: the economy and immigration.

The Economy

Ditching classroom scrubbed language for plain speech is necessary. But it’s not enough. The DFL must demonstrate that it can improve people’s economic lives, that working people can earn wages to raise families and afford healthcare. While Republicans have lost credibility on the economy, that hasn’t automatically benefited Democrats. Minnesota needs a comprehensive state economic plan.

Agriculture accounts for roughly 15% of the state’s total economic output and supports over 320,000 jobs. Tariffs and climate volatility have made farming increasingly precarious, an opportunity for the DFL to build a stability plan. Meanwhile, Minnesota’s urban centers are scrambling. Minneapolis pins hope on the 2028 NFL Draft, but one-off events are short-term boosts; most of that revenue flows to downtown hotels and restaurants, not throughout the regional economy. We need something with real reach.

Rochester offers one model: a strategic focus on healthcare and life sciences, advanced manufacturing, technology and software, and education. We don’t need to copy it, but we do need a regional plan that actively encourages businesses to locate here. Right now, a company considering Minneapolis faces a wall of regulations and taxes first, amenities like parks, schools, and community come second, if at all.

Outsiders see instability and chaos. There are real differences between the state DFL’s message and Minneapolis’s more DSA-aligned wing. But unless you’re deeply embedded in local politics, you won’t grasp those distinctions. What you see instead is a city divided, one that seems hostile to the conditions that attract jobs and investment. The math is simple: we cannot shrink the tax base by driving out employers while expanding government employment.

Immigration

Minneapolis residents earned the recognition they received for their response to ICE enforcement. At great personal risk, many stepped between federal agents and their immigrant neighbors. We showed the world what people-powered resistance looks like when facing government overreach.

But what’s next? Opposing Trump is part of the answer, though without Senate control, Democrats will be reduced to Instagram complaints. The harder work begins with sanctuaries that actually function.

Minneapolis welcomed a large influx of Ecuadorians fleeing gang violence and economic collapse. That was the right call. But it requires a real plan. When these families enter our schools, we need Spanish-language teachers to support them. Without that preparation, something dangerous happens: residents who initially supported sanctuary policies watch their schools and neighborhoods struggle under the strain and grow resentful. It’s not racist to demand that politicians who pass sanctuary policies fund the services those policies require. When they don’t, it reads as precisely the kind of poor governance that pushes people away from the DFL, and into the arms of alternatives.

Republicans understand this vulnerability well. They’ve bused migrants to blue cities, then deployed a media apparatus of cable news and content creators to document the resulting chaos. A strong DFL immigration policy must be both enforceable and affordable. Without it, the party will remain a target.

Reckoning

Both party conventions, DFL and Republican, offered ample evidence that it might be time to rethink the endorsement process altogether. The Los Angeles mayoral race provides an instructive contrast: their jungle-primary system advances the top two vote-getters regardless of party backing. Right now the race for second is a toss-up between the reality-TV figure Spencer Pratt and Councilwoman Nithya Raman, with incumbent Karen Bass holding a lead.

Many Minnesota candidates are ignoring party endorsements. It raises an obvious question: what’s the point of all that energy and money?

Ken Martin, the DNC chair, was forced to release the party’s after-action report from the last presidential election. One of the less discussed points: the party spends too much time talking to itself and not enough time in the communities it claims to represent. Most voters don’t care about internal party machinery. They want results. They want jobs, schools, healthcare. They’ll support any candidate who credibly promises to deliver those things.

If the DFL wants to expand its base, the answer is clear: listen harder to the obstacles people face, then build policies that address them. Explaining those policies in normal language only works if the DFL has actually done the work to produce results. Words come second. Delivery comes first.

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On Monday evening, business owners along Lyndale Avenue invited Mayor Frey to the Uptown VFW for a listening session. He may have thought he was walking into a respectful gathering. Instead, he found himself in a standing-room-only rally, business owners and their supporters on one side, biking advocates seeking to preserve the latest design on the other, and a large contingent of Minneapolis press documenting every word. Everyone came ready for a fight.

Hennepin County controls this project. Lyndale Avenue is County Road 22, so the county manages the budget and leads the design process. However, because the road runs through city limits, the city council and mayor must approve the design. If the two parties disagree, state law provides a dispute resolution process. The county has a website with detailed project information for those who want to dig deeper.

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Business owners fear the current plan will hollow out the corridor, just as it has along Hennepin Avenue. When they pleaded for a slower timeline or design changes, bike supporters responded with boos and dismissive remarks. The message was unmistakable: we don’t care if your business survives.

Several concerns raised during the meeting validate their worries. First, the newly opened Hennepin Avenue shows what’s at stake. A concrete median down the middle narrows the road and stalls traffic whenever someone parallel parks. Emergency vehicle access becomes a nightmare if an accident occurs, and accidents will happen. Just weeks ago, a car flipped onto the sidewalk in front of the C.C. Club. Now imagine that scenario on Lyndale Avenue when traffic has nowhere to go.

Then there’s winter. Snow removal in Uptown is already a mess; many people avoid the neighborhood between November and March because parking and navigation become nearly impossible. With the street, bike lanes, and walkway all needing snow removal, where to put it becomes a challenge. The city could haul snow away in trucks, but that’s expensive and time-consuming. Biking is nearly non-existent during this time period. Add two years of construction, narrowed roads, and fewer parking spots, and you’ve guaranteed a winter parking catastrophe that extends well beyond the project timeline.

The third issue: business survival during construction. Two years of disruption will empty the corridor. According to Mayor Frey, there’s no money to help. That’s unacceptable. The county and city need to either shrink the timeline to one year, even if it means three construction shifts daily, or provide direct financial support to affected businesses. It’s inexcusable. Carol Becker reported in the Minneapolis Times in December that the city budgeted $150,000 for a consultant to lead the Prince Sing-Along. If I owned a business on Lyndale and the city told me there’s no reconstruction assistance available, I’d stop believing anything they say about priorities.

Mayor Frey spoke for about ten minutes at the end. He didn’t commit to any specific actions if the city council approves the design this month. But he stayed after the event, talking to people who were openly hostile. That matters. Most politicians leave quickly when crowds turn cold. He didn’t. His willingness to engage, even with critics, stands out.

The People’s Way Is a Long Way from Completion

The Business, Housing & Zoning Committee voted to deny the city’s recommendation of the Agape Movement for redevelopment of the Peoples’ Way. Ward 9 Council Member Jason Chavez brought the motion, supported by Jamal Osman, Aurin Chowdhury, and Aisha Chughtai. They chose denial, rather than sending the decision back to staff, specifically to preclude Agape Movement from future consideration.

It was the right call. Agape Movement wasn’t ready. As Chavez and Ward 8 Council Member Soren Stevenson pointed out in their press conference, the group lacked “the right experience and support” for the project. Council Member Shaffer questioned the group’s finances. Agape operates both an LLC and a nonprofit; the city has a contract with the LLC, but city representatives couldn’t explain what was in it or how much had been spent.

The city stipulated that development must be conducted by a nonprofit. That restriction may be shrinking the pool of qualified applicants. The project is back to square one if the full council votes to uphold the committee vote. The city may want to drop the requirement that the process be led by a nonprofit. Let for-profit developers bid. Add a stipulation that they partner with a nonprofit, the final design and city sign-off will protect community interests regardless. There’s no reason to disqualify capable developers just because they’re in business to make money.

Division Comes with a Cost

Driving through Theodore Wirth Park on Tuesday afternoon, Minneapolis felt like a great place to live. People were biking, running, golfing in the sunshine, from a distance, they looked like they didn’t have a worry in the world. Walk into any Minneapolis meeting about biking, transportation, public safety, or economic development, and the mood shifts completely. You feel the weight of every ideological division the city carries.

Listening to the protesters on Monday, I was struck by their entitlement, arrogance, and ableism. They were young with few physical limitations. They were also 99% white. Few BIPOC voices were present, let alone leading the charge against small business owners. Their sense of injustice runs far deeper than bike lanes.

As one speaker pointed out, the protesters aren’t fighting Elon Musk or Walmart. They’re fighting yoga studio owners, dry cleaners, and restaurant operators. Most of these business exist on very small profit margins. They are people who almost certainly vote progressive. The protestors acted as though the jobs and tax revenue these businesses provide have no bearing on the community’s success.

The protesters are a vocal, organized minority who don’t recognize how many depend on vehicles not by choice, but out of necessity. They remind one of MAGA supporters, loud, angry, convinced they’re not being heard (despite prioritizing their voices in the design process), and utterly indifferent to anyone who disagrees. Drive down Hennepin, Blaisdell, or Bryant and you can see exactly who was heard.

The Minneapolis City Council and Hennepin County Commission listen to these activists because they’re organized and visible. But that minority view doesn’t represent most residents. Most people drive. Most business owners are trying to rebuild after six devastating years. The city is driving out the families and entrepreneurs invested in seeing Minneapolis recover by prioritizing ideology over neighborhoods’ economic survival.

If you want to be heard, listen first. Show respect before you demand it.

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Minneapolis must ask itself what it wants from the police and how we’re going to prioritize our public safety dollars. Chief O’Hara resigned on the heels of the 6th Anniversary of George Floyd’s murder, an occasion that saw community gatherings of remembrance and panels devoted to pushing for greater change within the Minneapolis Police Department. Social media has been abuzz with denunciations of Mayor Frey and Chief O’Hara since the resignation. Despite his shortcomings, many believe that Minneapolis is unlikely to find another chief of O’Hara’s caliber anytime soon. However, others have piled on the recrimination and are making the case his performance was unfit from the start.

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We’d like to point out that on Friday morning at 8:30 a.m., two people were shot downtown at Ninth Street South and Nicollet. It’s our opinion that while the factions within the city battle over the philosophy of policing, crime continues to impact the daily lives of residents. The daylight shooting near Target’s corporate headquarters sends a message that Minneapolis is out of control. While Minneapolis may be improving in some areas, it’s worth examining whether we are spending too much time analyzing the police and not enough trying to combat the root causes of crime. One of the victims shot downtown was a 44-year-old bystander waiting for a bus. This story, like so many, gets buried in the onslaught of other news, but the victims remember. They won’t forget. On Saturday, the city honored the memory of Police Officer Jamal Mitchell by renaming a stretch of Blaisdell Avenue South after him. He was killed while responding to a shooting in 2024. His family will feel his absence for the rest of their lives.

Hot summers historically correlate with higher crime rates. We expect to see more shootings, shots fired, stolen vehicles and assaults. Hopefully, it is clear to people that the heat is only one factor in crime rates, just as the number of police is one factor. Unfortunately, because of a depleted number of officers, historical abuses, cost overruns, and continued trouble within the department, we, as a city, seem to place most of our focus on the MPD to either save the city or drag it down. The causes of crime, however, are numerous and we would like to see the city reach a plateau where it can accept that both the police and other social support are needed. The causes of crime often cited include:

1. Poverty and Economic Inequality

2. Social Environment and Peer Influence

3. Family Dysfunction and Childhood Trauma

4. Substance Abuse

5. Lack of Education and Employment

In this newsletter we often advocate for elected officials to focus more on creating the economic environment necessary for job creation. The reason we do so is because jobs address poverty. When people are working, it can lead to less substance abuse, more family cohesion, and more tax dollars to fund the social safety net needed to assist people with housing and education.

We aren’t advocating for jobs because we’re eager to see capital pool at the top of the economic food chain. Rather, it’s because without them desperation creeps into a city, people go hungry, and they turn on one another. There are many problems with capitalism, and the Democratic Party would be well-served to consider how to ameliorate the worst of these, but at the same time, the jobs created when businesses grow and thrive build community and reduce inequality.

Let the Data Lead

My recent newsletter about the fate of Commissioner Barnette of the Office of Community Safety elicited a number of comments questioning the need for this department. When it comes to safety, it’s worth asking whether the Office of Community Safety reduced crime.

We’d like to see more emphasis on the statistics and less on the ideology driving these programs. For example, to illustrate the importance of data, let’s consider an issue that isn’t a topic of focus right now. Does distributing condoms at high schools reduce teen pregnancy? Without looking up any data, our first reaction would be yes, absolutely it does. We would advocate for the county to distribute them everywhere possible to reduce unwanted pregnancies that can lead to reduced education and economic opportunities, especially for women. However, looking up the data, we find a more nuanced picture.

Without counseling and education support, distribution can actually increase unintended pregnancies.

Knowing the data, if we were to design a program to reduce teen pregnancy, we would pair it with counseling and education, otherwise we would have a program, funded by the government, that wasn’t resulting in the desired outcome. Here’s another example, the city raised the price of cigarettes to a minimum of $15. If the goal was to reduce smoking, we would want to see the data. It might be that it has resulted in less cigarette smoking (good) but more use of nicotine packets and vaping (bad). This trade-off might be acceptable, but we want to have the data to inform the path forward.

This same approach would be useful when it comes to the Office of Community Safety. Has it reduced the need for police officers or reduced crime? As for police hours, the amount of overtime being paid would indicate that non-police alternatives such as violence interrupters, safety ambassadors and the behavioral crisis response (BCR) have had very little combined impact. The BCR in particular has been cited frequently to show how police hours have been reduced because calls are routed to community organizations rather than to police. It’s a small sample size and we would like a more robust data set, but Tuesday, 5/26, from 8 a.m to 3 p.m. there were 310 calls directed to the police and 13 directed to BCR, of those, 8 were for a BCR welfare check. If these statistics were emblematic, it would mean roughly 4% of calls that might once have been directed to the police are now directed at non-police alternatives. This analysis is crude, but it would be the basis for determining whether the money being spent on the BCR is being well spent or if the program needs to be changed or eliminated. We’re not advocating either way except to say let’s put more emphasis on data.

Setting aside the specific candidate for Commissioner of the Office of Community Safety, now might be an appropriate time to revisit the goals of this program and the make-up. What data shows whether violence interrupters and other non-police alternatives work?

One metric is to examine homicides and shots fired. These appear to be roughly the same in 2026 as they were in 2025. Year to date Assault offenses are at 4,285, last year there were 4,056. For homicides, there have been 18 so far, last year there were 20 at this point. For shots fired, last year there were 1,769 versus 1,650 so far this year.

It’s worth asking whether the funding allocated to the Office of Community Safety and the host of alternatives to policing are achieving the desired outcome. We often hear about people wanting to see police officers in their communities, walking patrols, rather than only showing up once shots have been fired. More interaction between the police and the community before a crime is committed could reduce crime and improve trust. A trained officer wearing a uniform is a presence that represents order for many people.

The goal in reviewing these services is to support what is working and discard what isn’t instead of assuming that national data used to inform their creation is relevant to our local situation. One of the main reasons the city council has put Commissioner Barnette in administrative purgatory is his handling of the budget. They want answers as to why the police have exceeded theirs for overtime and other categories. That’s a fair question; it is part of their fiscal responsibility. We’re suggesting the review be broader.

The statistics indicate the city has not seen a significant reduction in violence from violence interrupters, nor are patrols of unarmed safety ambassadors leading to less open drug use, robberies, assaults, car thefts, and vandalism. So maybe it's time to look at alternatives to the alternatives. Having data on what is working will benefit the next chief, whomever that person turns out to be.

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Beyond the investigation, a range of concerns about O’Hara’s performance had been raised in recent weeks by both DSA-aligned council members and some of the more moderate members. Budget overruns generated significant frustration, as did what some viewed as mishandling of the Davis Moturi shooting and the investigation into Allison Lussier’s death. Some wanted the MPD to play a more active role during Operation Metro Surge. The most frequently cited complaint, however, is what critics considered too slow a pace of reforms within the department. Others in the community viewed O’Hara as a steady presence who made genuine efforts to communicate with the public.

The Chief had been scheduled for a public hearing on June 3. We assume that is no longer on the council’s agenda. This story is developing, and readers can expect more coverage as facts become available.

More Upheaval in an Already Unsettled Moment

O’Hara’s resignation lands on top of an already unsettled moment for public safety in Minneapolis. The failure to confirm a Commissioner for the Office of Community Safety, and now the sudden departure of the Police Chief, leaves a broad field on which to rethink the path forward, if the city has the will to do so.

Two Sides of the Same Frustration

As the searches for a new chief and commissioner begin, we’d like to see a community conversation around what exactly is meant when people speak of reform, and whether that standard can be met. Minneapolis has been through a great deal. This change is yet more upheaval as the city tries to steady itself and regain the upper hand on public safety.

Rate of change is difficult to gauge. For those who have suffered directly from police abuse, reform cannot come fast enough. For those frustrated by crime and lawlessness on their streets, change is also too slow, the difference is that they still believe police are an integral part of the solution. We’re hopeful the current upheaval can be resolved in a way that leaves all residents feeling the MPD is genuinely serving them.

Define Success Before Filling the Seats

As that process unfolds, the central question deserves to be asked plainly: what does success look like, and how will we measure it? The city has an opportunity, amid this reset, to define those outcomes clearly before filling either seat, rather than after.

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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.

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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.

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It’s worth stepping back and asking what, exactly, is driving all of this anxiety. At its core, the car-versus-bike debate is a proxy for a larger concern: that we are contributing to climate catastrophe and have a moral obligation to stop it. The logic is straightforward, if human activity is warming the planet, then humans must do everything in their power to reverse course. The problem is that, from where Minneapolis sits, there isn’t much we can actually do. Our city’s emissions account for roughly 0.05% of global output annually. That means if every resident stopped driving tomorrow, no cars, no Amazon deliveries, bikes and boots only, it would make essentially no measurable difference to the planet’s trajectory.

The numbers bear this out. According to an Associated Press report from 2018, admittedly a few years old, but the order of magnitude holds, global CO2 emissions run between 37 and 40 billion metric tons per year. Minnesota’s share is approximately 117 million metric tons, or about 0.29% of the total. Minneapolis, as a portion of the state, accounts for roughly 0.05% of that global figure. And transportation makes up only about 24% of the city’s emissions, the majority comes from heating and powering our homes and businesses. Do the math: if we eliminated every car in the city entirely, Minneapolis’s contribution to global CO2 would drop from approximately 0.05% to about 0.038%.

Turn down the heat

None of this is an argument for giving up. There are real, meaningful reasons to make lifestyle changes, riding the bus, biking to the store, eating less meat, buying used, combining errands, switching to solar. Small choices can add up, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting to feel less complicit in a problem that genuinely worries you. Do what fits your life.

But when those choices become a cudgel, when people who need to drive to work or want their business accessible by car are treated as the enemy, it’s worth asking whether the anger is proportionate to the impact. Someone who bikes their kid to school but flies the whole family to Florida every December may well be generating more carbon than a neighbor who drives daily but never boards a plane. We’re all making trade-offs, and most of us are doing the best we can.

The point is this: even if every person in Minneapolis made every right choice, it would not meaningfully alter the planet’s future. The fury that urban planning decisions tend to generate is wildly disproportionate to the actual environmental stakes. Let’s keep making good choices where we can, and let’s stop treating road design like a moral referendum. The city has real problems to solve. We’ll solve them faster if we’re pulling in the same direction.

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Agape Movement was formed in 2021 to clear protesters from George Floyd Square. The group lost its nonprofit status in 2023, had it reinstated in 2024, and has yet to file any financial reports or register with the Attorney General’s office. Their website offers little clarity: the About Us section describes the organization this way:

The Agape Movement functions as an umbrella organization providing training opportunities for young adults. We address systematic inequities and offer ideas to reform the criminal justice system. We work at preventing further violence by creating job and training opportunities through personal interaction and boots-on-the-ground interaction.

While we support Agape’s stated aspirations of training youth and providing opportunities that direct them away from violence, there is no mention of property development experience anywhere in their public-facing materials. Susan Du of the Star Tribune has reported on the group’s history in detail, and our elected officials appear to have far more confidence in this organization than the public record warrants.

The concerns go deeper than an incomplete website. In 2024, federal prosecutors alleged that Agape’s ties to the Bloods street gang were more extensive than the organization had acknowledged. From an article in 2024:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Esther Soria Mignanelli wrote in a filing that a “cooperating defendant” would testify that “members, associates, and leaders” of the Bloods helped form the Agape Movement Co., citing “bank and check records,” Mignanelli added that Agape paid “tens of thousands of dollars” to multiple members of the Minneapolis Bloods, money drawn from a City of Minneapolis contract for violence interruption and community outreach work.

In other words, city funds were flowing to known gang members.

That context matters when evaluating the mayor’s decision to select this group to manage a multi-million-dollar development project, especially given that a community survey conducted at significant public expense appeared to point toward a different vision for the site. What, exactly, is the shared vision the mayor is describing? And does it reflect what residents actually said they wanted?

We recently had our own experience with the cost of misplaced trust. I hired someone off Nextdoor to build an enclosure for our air conditioning unit, a simple job, no resume required, just someone who needed the work. They asked for half the contract up front for materials. We expected it done in a day. It took five, broken up by long gaps, uncomfortable negotiations, and a final cost double what we’d budgeted. By the end, I was ready to pay him to stop and find someone qualified, someone with a website, a portfolio, and actual experience. The final product was serviceable, but flawed.

The parallel to this situation is not subtle. There comes a point in every project where you have to decide whether the odds of a successful outcome justify the friction and cost ahead. The city and state have a documented pattern of struggling to hold contracted nonprofits accountable once a project is underway. That’s why we’d recommend that any contract with Agape, or any group selected through this process, include a clear termination clause.

Conclusion

We’ve contacted Mayor Frey’s office to learn more about Agape’s relevant experience. They offered to connect us with the Request for Proposal managers. If that meeting happens, we’ll be asking about the group’s background, their incomplete website, their lack of financial disclosure, and why, despite a community survey that appeared to reflect a different direction, this selection was made. We also want to know why a development process that has already made the neighborhood wait five years is now projected to take two more. What is the budget? Does the contract include a termination clause?

We’re fairly confident the city council will reject the mayor’s choice, and the project will continue to stall. In this case, unless the RFP managers have compelling non-public information about Agape Movement, we would support that rejection. The Peoples’ Way is not a backyard project, it’s a multi-million-dollar development that will shape the square and the surrounding neighborhood for decades. It deserves professional, qualified management.

The Business Committee takes up the issue on June 2. The full council decides on June 11. Road construction on the intersection, long overdue, begins June 8.

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We spent Saturday afternoon taking in the art and atmosphere of Art-a-Whirl. Sunday, May 17, is the last day. We recommend stopping by Andrea Canter’s studio 218 in the Casket Arts Building. There was a speakeasy in the basement. She was one of several artists whose work we enjoyed. If you can, taking public transit to the event is recommended.

Josh Bassais wants Hennepin County to do its job, on public safety, housing, transit, and county services, and he has a plan to get there. Central to his pitch is better collaboration across levels of government, particularly with the state, at a moment when the legislature holds the fate of HCMC in its hands.

District 3 is shaping up to be one of the more competitive Hennepin County Commissioner races this cycle. Bassais is challenging 12-year incumbent Marion Greene, whom I interviewed last week. Two other candidates, Kevin Chavis and Abdihakim Ibrahim, have also announced.

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For Bassais, HCMC isn’t an abstraction, it’s personal. His mother was a young single mom who depended on Hennepin County Health Services, and as a child he benefited directly from those county resources. His father, a severe diabetic on disability in his 30s who suffered two strokes, received long-term care at HCMC. “I remember sitting in dialysis with him at HCMC,” Bassais says, “and it extended some years onto his life.” His father died at 37. That history shapes how Bassais talks about the hospital’s uncertain future: potential closure, he says, “would be an absolute tragedy, not just for folks who live in the county, but the entire state.” He points to HCMC’s Level 1 trauma designation as a resource the region cannot afford to lose. On the funding question, he’s skeptical of the state’s current approach: “What’s proposed at the state is very much a band-aid” that may only hold for a year. He also faults county leadership for not seeing this coming, arguing that after the 2024 election, administrators should have been planning immediately, not scrambling at the last minute before session ends.

Interview Summary

Josh Bassais, a lifelong Minneapolis resident and District 3 candidate for Hennepin County Commissioner, explains why he’s challenging a 12-year incumbent. A product of Minneapolis public schools and Ward 8 resident for nearly five decades, Bassais frames his candidacy around a single, urgent argument: Hennepin County has substituted political theater for actual governance, and the consequences, visible in encampments near his home, stalled transit projects, and an HCMC funding crisis, have fallen hardest on the people the county is supposed to serve. His core pitch is collaboration over gamesmanship, bringing private-sector discipline in budget management and stakeholder alignment to a board he believes has drifted from its basic responsibilities.

On housing and homelessness, Bassais argues for individualized wraparound services that treat the crisis as the public health emergency it is, rather than accepting outdoor encampments as a viable long-term strategy. He criticizes the county’s $200 million investment in the Fort Snelling housing project, roughly $1 million per unit, as a misallocation when affordable units could have been built closer to where people actually live and work. On transit, he uses the Green Line extension as a case study in poor planning and lack of stakeholder engagement, pointing to the community’s tunnel demand as a foreseeable cost driver that should never have blindsided administrators.

Bassais also weighs in on HCMC’s funding uncertainty, the Lyndale Avenue reconstruction’s effect on small businesses, the Sheriff’s office controversy, and youth corrections, consistently returning to the theme that better outcomes require cross-agency collaboration, data-driven accountability, and leadership willing to listen before acting. He closes with a pointed contrast to his opponent: after 12 years, many District 3 constituents don’t know who their commissioner is. Bassais says he’s not in this for the salary, he left corporate America to try to make a difference, and that visibility, empathy, and transparency will define how he serves if elected. The DFL endorsement convention is June 13th.

Thank you for reading and caring about Minneapolis — and Hennepin County.

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Brunch and Flowers

A typical image of Mother’s Day is brunch and flowers and a day off from the regular Sunday routine. Those things are well-deserved, and if you’re a mother who has such a day, we hope you enjoy it. You’ve earned the recognition.

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However, that image of mothers is incomplete. It’s a Hallmark card that has photoshopped out the brutality, heartache, and tedium of motherhood. It doesn’t do justice to what is asked of women who become mothers, sometimes not by choice. It seems that television, Facebook, and Instagram have homogenized and sanitized motherhood. A mother at home in the kitchen baking, balancing the checkbook, and seamlessly keeping the family schedule up to date is so far off from the experience of many as to be laughable. While many mothers certainly do these things, the picture leaves out the battles and tears and loneliness that deserve to be in the frame as well.

For example, twenty years ago I worked at U.S. News & World Report with a woman called Denise who was a Creative Marketing Director. In my eyes, she was the epitome of New York cool, a great job, respected by her staff and colleagues, and dressed superbly. Regardless of what deadline or strife consumed the day, Denise handled it with grace and a sense of humor. It took months before I learned that she was stepmother to a teenage daughter who was in and out of drug rehab. That the bills for the rehab meant their family was essentially broke, and that she showed up in a panic every day, worried about being laid off or fired for being too strident, or not strident enough.

The expectations we place on mothers are impossible. If they work too much, they are seen as neglecting their children. If they stay home to raise those children, they are seen as not living fully actualized lives. Stand in the kitchen of a mother whose child has special needs, and you’ll learn about how the schools come up short. You’ll hear about the sleepless nights and the inner doubts that grip them at 4 a.m., and how the cause of it all gets laid at her feet, by the people around her, and by herself. Yes, fathers are thought to play a role, but the doubts and expectations are always placed on the mother.

Witness to the Surge

As we witnessed during the resistance to Operation Metro Surge, when federal immigration enforcement swept through our neighborhoods, it was often mothers who served as the fiercest fighters. They stood in subzero temperatures to guard the schools. They showed up in church basements to pack food. Mothers were prepared to swallow the addresses of those to whom they were delivering packages. Despite all the progress America has made in increasing the opportunities for women, our expectations of mothers don’t seem to have changed all that much. They are still treated as lacking if they fall short of performing as the backbone of the family. It’s mothers who make the doctor appointments, know school deadlines, volunteer, and put food on the table. It’s mothers who most acutely feel the loss of children sent to war, or jail, or picked up randomly by ICE agents. Even if those bodies didn’t come from inside their bodies, they feel it. Mothers are intimate with loss, the rewards of motherhood not always equal to the sacrifices they've made.

For these reasons and more, when I think of mothers it isn’t a fluffy Hallmark card with flowers and hearts and anodyne statements of “You’re the best.” A more accurate picture is of a mother standing in the middle of a smoking battlefield. She is holding a pitchfork and tied to it is an improvised flag made from a torn bed sheet stained with blood and urine and vomit. Between her legs is a dirty and dented car seat with an infant, one that may not be hers. Her hair is wild, her nails broken, her face smeared with sweat and grease. Her eyes are full of the boldness and compassion of someone who has watched others die, of panicked car rides to the hospital with children who have broken bones, of holding the hand of someone who has been raped, or beaten, or imprisoned. These are people who know that life can be very fucking hard to survive, even though your neighbor or sister or friend is posting pictures of their recent trip to Portugal or their stable, athletic, drug-free child’s graduation before they head off to Harvard.

Mothers deserve their day. They deserve our love and respect. They bear the scars of war, of hunger, of dreams deferred, of holding ground when burdened with unattainable expectations. They are the warriors on which we depend. We just don’t hand out medals when they come home wounded.

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Watching the press conference in which Council President Payne, Vice President Osman, and Ward 2 Council Member Wonsley responded to Mayor Frey’s 2026 State of the City address left me with several impressions and a few questions.

The mayor and city council have competing priorities, few shared ones, and little apparent interest in resolving their differences anytime soon. For Minneapolis, that likely means little meaningful progress, at least as we define it. Progress means a city where more people want to live: where there are good-paying jobs, safe streets, stable housing, and real opportunities to grow a family, a career, or a business. It means a thriving economy that allows people to support themselves, reducing, rather than deepening, the city's dependence on government intervention. Progress does not mean a city perpetually raising revenue to manage a growing population that is out of work, food insecure, reliant on rental assistance, or caught in substance use disorders that too often lead to homelessness and petty crime.

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Many will be encouraged to hear that Mayor Frey, after eight and a half years in office, has grown less patient with open-air drug use and a depleted police force. His plan centers on increasing access to Brixadi, a long-acting addiction treatment, expanding affordable housing, and connecting more residents to county services. He noted that there are now only 239 unsheltered people in Hennepin County, all of whom have been connected with outreach teams. If accurate, that represents remarkable progress.

Mayor Frey hopes to have 800 officers on the force by the time he leaves office in roughly three and a half years. Reaching that goal will require council support, no small ask from a body that remains deeply skeptical of the department, both for its history and its current conduct. Frey can expect continued scrutiny over the police budget, the handling of domestic abuse cases and officer-involved shootings, off-duty conduct, the training center, and the long-delayed Southside Community Safety Center. The replacement for the 3rd Precinct was briefly mentioned as moving forward, but residents will believe it when the doors are open and they can walk in and speak with an officer. The facility is expected to include childcare, mental health support, and youth programming. Notably absent from the speech: any mention of Community Safety Commissioner Barnette, whose nomination remains unapproved by the council, or of Police Chief O’Hara and the question of his own confirmation.

The mayor spoke of a city government focused and disciplined about delivering on the basics. One example: the city fixed 700 streetlights, clearing the official backlog. Another: reducing permitting red tape for businesses and construction, including a bold claim that small-scale residential projects will have permits approved within one business day of application. There was an implied contrast with the council’s recent agenda items, legalizing bathhouses and drug paraphernalia among them, though the mayor was careful not to name names. While he spoke of the city’s responsibility to “set the table” for business, actual job creation received just one concrete mention: employment tied to the Upper Harbor Terminal amphitheater. One genuinely interesting idea was the mayor’s discussion of new potential uses for TIF, Tax Increment Financing, a public financing tool that uses future property tax revenue gains generated by a development to fund the project itself, to help large retail spaces downsize into smaller, more accessible storefronts.

One area of apparent agreement between the mayor and council is the need to help small businesses recover from Operation Metro Surge. Worth noting, however: the $7 million set aside for that purpose covers reduced fees and event permits. The city is not writing checks to small businesses, it is simply collecting less revenue from them.

How to Know if You’re Working Class

Council President Payne spoke about the council’s role “to bubble up the priorities of our community,” describing a working-class agenda built around dignity and affordability. “Back to basics to me means living in a house that you can afford and live with dignity,” he said. Vice President Osman expressed disappointment at the mayor’s veto of the rental notice extension. The council rebuked the mayor for not working more closely with them to “advance a working-class agenda that really put the people first,” emphasizing that government is a collective enterprise, “not an individual sport.”

Listening to the council’s rebuttal, I found myself wondering: who, exactly, is included in this working-class agenda? When they say “working people,” they appear to mean something more specific than people who work. I spend most of my time on this newsletter and seeking contract communications clients. I work out of a nontraditional space, without a salaried employer or benefits. Am I working class? Perhaps it’s the English degree that disqualifies me. Or perhaps it’s the absence of union membership, though plumbers, electricians, and carpenters earn significantly more than I do at the moment. Teachers, despite their advanced degrees, are generally considered working class. Nurses too. Doctors are not. Where does an artist who left Macalester to sell their work fall? Which council members are working class? Council President Payne, who moved to Minneapolis in 2000 to study mechanical engineering and later earned an MBA from the Carlson School of Management, earns $110,000 a year in his current role. Is he working class?

The point is not to ridicule anyone. It’s to suggest that “working class,” as used in local politics, has become too elastic to carry real meaning. It functions as a political signal, a way of saying we’re on the side of real people, while quietly coding for opposition to corporations, property owners above a certain threshold, and business owners who object to drug use on their block. If we use the DSA’s definition, working class is determined by one’s relationship to the means of production: if you sell your labor and don’t own the enterprise, you are among the roughly 80% of Americans who qualify. Under that definition, I was working class even when I was in corporate management. I doubt that’s what Council President Payne has in mind.

The Budget Battle to Come

While the definition of “working class” may seem academic, it will have real consequences in this year’s budget process. Mayor Frey warned that “getting serious will mean hard conversations about programs or investments that aren’t working.” Council Member Wonsley has said repeatedly that she wants economic development distributed across the city’s neighborhoods rather than concentrated downtown. A tool like TIF, which primarily benefits property development, may struggle to earn council support if it’s seen as favoring developers over working people. Our concern is straightforward: when businesses and investors perceive the city as hostile to their success, they go elsewhere, and the resulting downward cycle ends in stagnation. A working-class agenda only succeeds if it attracts employers, ones willing to hire people across a wide range of backgrounds, education levels, and skill sets.

What city program genuinely helps the working class if it doesn’t result in a job? You can’t be part of the working class if you aren’t working. Mayor Frey at least acknowledged the city’s responsibility to “set the table” for business, even if the details were thin. We want the council and the mayor to agree on an agenda that favors job creation broadly, corporations and construction workers, teachers and lawyers, investors and tiny media startups like this one. The city must welcome anyone willing to invest here. Narrow the definition of who deserves to be part of the revival too sharply, and you stop it before it gains momentum.

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Link to the 2026 State of the City by Mayor Frey.

Link to the Council President Payne Rebuttal with VP Osman and Council Member Wonsley.

Sitting down with Commissioner Marion Greene, we covered a lot of ground and learned how much the county actually does. Hennepin County’s $3.15 billion budget is larger than Minneapolis’s and dedicates 26.8% to Human Services, 21.2% to Health, and 15% to Law, Safety and Justice. The county also runs HCMC, the region’s trauma 1 teaching hospital, which is currently fighting for its financial future at the state legislature. Clergy and supporters held a 24-hour prayer vigil to encourage the legislature to pass a proposed sales tax before the session ends.

We didn't get to everything — the closing of HERC, for example, was only briefly touched on. But we did discover that Greene shares our editor's facility with the two-letter words that make Scrabble players insufferable. Reflecting on all the governments and organizations the county must navigate, a bigger question kept nagging at us: is our election system filtering out exactly the kind of people we need most? To be clear, this isn't a critique of Commissioner Greene or any specific candidate — it's a broader observation about the traits our election system tends to reward. Greene, for her part, is seeking the DFL endorsement this August.

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Winning office rewards extroverts — people who are sociable, competitive, and increasingly expected to produce a steady stream of social media videos, even if they're just telling voters what small business they supported for breakfast. But governing Minnesota's complex challenges, from income disparity to public safety to substance use, may require something different: people who listen more than they talk, who can digest a dense report, and who are willing to follow rather than lead when the moment calls for it. That's not a skill set that fits neatly on a campaign mailer. We may be biased by our own introverted tendencies, but the quiet collaborators rarely get the credit when things go right.

With the federal government now withholding another $91 million in Medicaid from Minnesota, and demand for SNAP, housing, and healthcare assistance at high levels, the stakes for getting this right are significant. There’s no quick fix, but options like proportional representation or open top-four primaries could help broaden who runs and who wins. In the meantime, voters can start by asking themselves: when was the last time I chose a candidate because they seemed like a good team player

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Interview Summary

Marion Greene is the District 3 Hennepin County Commissioner, running for reelection after 12 years on the commission and two prior years as a state legislator. A foreign service kid raised across multiple countries, she came to Minnesota after being recruited by the Pillsbury Company, later moved into the medical device industry, and found her way into politics through a public policy role — with the encouragement of her then-VP, now Congresswoman Angie Craig.

Greene highlighted key accomplishments including Hennepin County’s climate action plan and zero waste plan, championed during the pandemic while she chaired the county board. She emphasized the county’s role as the primary local funder of affordable housing, while acknowledging that need continues to outpace resources. Other topics included Hennepin County Healthcare’s leadership transition and the shift toward decentralized county services that meet residents where they are.

On the Sheriff’s Office, Greene clarified remarks taken out of context — her point was never that the county shouldn’t support public safety, but that expanding the sheriff’s patrol role countywide would be fiscally irresponsible given the county’s roughly 100 deputies versus 1,500-plus city officers regionwide. She also flagged a $15 million budget overage worth scrutiny given looming federal Medicaid cuts.

On Lyndale Avenue, she explained that as a county road, city council approval is desired but not technically required, construction is pushed to 2028, and an unresolved question remains about whether Mayor Frey can now bypass council sign-off on road designs.

The Hennepin County Home School discussion weighed real tradeoffs. While the 145-acre Minnetonka facility gave many youth their first access to medical care, mental health services, and regular meals, Greene cited outdated buildings and the broader shift toward community-based care as reasons for closure. She pushed back on claims linking the closure to rising car thefts, noting only a handful of kids remained at the end. It’s an open question as to whether community alternatives deliver equivalent outcomes. Greene conceded no adequate regional solution yet exists for the most traumatized youth, pointing to the new Youth Stabilization Center at 1800 Chicago Avenue as a step toward modern best practices.

Greene closed by discussing the county-city collaboration on homelessness and making an appeal for listeners to sign up as election judges emphasizing civic participation as she heads into her reelection campaign.

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For this interview, I wanted to hear more about his recent work. Links provided below. Over the past month, he has weighed in on some of the city’s most difficult topics. We agreed that the solutions aren’t easy and that real progress will require a genuine change in mindset from both the mayor and the city council.

To follow Eric’s work by email, sign up for his newsletter at startribune.com/roperalert.

Interview Summary

On Uptown, Roper is cautiously optimistic. He pointed to a new Urban Land Institute report outlining actionable improvements: creating a Business Improvement District modeled on the downtown example, better marketing of existing parking, developing a more walkable “Uptown Alley” behind Seven Points, and, his personal favorite, extending the Como-Harriet streetcar line along the Midtown Greenway to the Uptown Transit Center as a bold, tourist-friendly connector. He acknowledged that near-term steps like walking groups and increased police presence matter, but argued that real revival will require market intervention, possibly including the city purchasing key properties or using tax increment financing to retrofit outdated retail buildings.

On downtown, Roper made the case that Minneapolis has spent roughly 25 years stepping back from the market interventions that once drove its revival, while St. Paul, having hit rock bottom, is now moving with urgency, committing county dollars to housing and riverfront development. He expressed frustration that neither the mayor nor the council is treating the erosion of the commercial tax base with the seriousness it demands. The revenue losses from deeply discounted building sales won’t fully appear in the tax rolls for another year or two, by which point the damage will be much harder to reverse.

On the drug paraphernalia decriminalization debate, Roper was characteristically nuanced. He acknowledged that since the current ordinance clearly isn’t solving the open drug use problem in Uptown and elsewhere, the case for decriminalization has some merit. But he said he was left uneasy by what he described as the “kid gloves” approach of harm reduction providers who deliberately avoid steering people toward treatment.

He also made the case for a regional summit bringing together law enforcement, social service agencies, counties, and nonprofits around a shared strategy. The fragmentation of the metro, 140-plus cities, seven counties, 35 police chiefs in Hennepin County alone, makes coordinated action extremely difficult, and no one appears to be pushing for it.

On city governance, Roper described the council as “must-see TV in a bad way.” He credited the more progressive bloc for having a clear and active policy agenda, but noted that the mayor and his allies are largely playing defense without offering a competing vision. He stopped short of predicting how things improve, and said he will be listening closely to the mayor’s upcoming State of the City address for any signal that a course correction is in the works.

Thank you for reading and caring about Minneapolis.

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Links to the columns we discussed:

Five great ideas to improve Uptown, the Twin Cities’ most enduring commercial hub

March 27

The new season of Minneapolis City Council is must-see TV, in a bad way

April 11

Is now the right time for Minneapolis to loosen its drug laws?

April 14

Hunger strikers say the government is wrong about incinerator’s risks. I don’t buy it.

April 17

Only one of our Twin Cities appears serious about reviving its downtown

April 24

Thursday, I spent half a day watching the Minneapolis City Council meeting and feel as though I’m still recovering. When my editor asked how it went, I struggled to find the right words.

“Well, if I were opening a business, the last place I would choose right now is Minneapolis.”

The reason is simple. The current city council has reached a mind-numbing state of dysfunction. Members are unpredictable and lack a shared set of priorities. As we’ve written before, the focus must be on attracting jobs, projecting stability to investors, and shoring up a tax base that is eroding rapidly as downtown continues to hollow out. Meaningful collaboration on those priorities does not appear possible at the moment.

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One telling detail: City Clerk Casey Carl told the council he is struggling to find a date for a consultant-led leadership retreat because aligning the schedules of 13 council members and the mayor has proven nearly impossible. In a private business, the boss would simply require everyone to clear their calendars, because the situation is hurting the organization and it needs to be fixed. But in our city government, 14 people each believe their schedule and their opinions take precedence. The result is a cycle of frustration and ineffectiveness, and a city that is floundering while residents and businesses look for opportunities elsewhere.

Watch the latest council meeting and you will witness personal grudges, arguments over what cooperation even means, and revolts on multiple fronts: against the mayor, against the strong mayor system, minority against majority. It brings to mind the 1953 Marlon Brando film “The Wild One”, in which Brando plays Johnny Stabler, a brooding delinquent who leads a motorcycle gang terrorizing a small California town. When asked what he’s rebelling against, he sneers, “Whaddya got?”

There were moments in Thursday’s meeting we could have clipped and shared on social media to ridicule specific members, score points, or highlight their contradictions. That behavior, practiced constantly by others, only hardens the fault lines between members and between leaders and residents. It isn’t our style. We want to highlight solutions. More importantly, we want our city leaders to find solutions and actually implement them. When this newsletter becomes a boring weekly thank-you note to council members, you’ll know the city is on the right track.

The city needs a functional government. We need our 14 representatives to occasionally speak with one voice. The council and mayor were sworn in on January 5, 2026, to four-year terms. If the current dynamic holds, expect a steady stream of slim-majority ordinances, mayoral vetoes, and failed override attempts, a process that will grease the wheels of the city’s decline. The mayor will seek to consolidate power in his office and work around the council whenever possible. The council will grow increasingly frustrated and escalate its attempts to remain relevant. Neither path leads anywhere good.

First-Hand Accounts

We read several reports on Thursday’s meeting. The mainstream press tends to focus on specific votes and outcomes. What gets left out is the anger and bitterness that have surfaced after a mere 100 days in office. As one council member said, near tears: “I can’t go on this way. It must change.”

Unfortunately, it can go on this way. People can remain out of work. Buildings can continue to sell for pennies on the dollar. Potholes can get deeper. More cars can be stolen. More businesses can take a chance on this city and fail. What the council and mayor often overlook is that changing this trajectory is within their power. They could turn off their social media feeds, lock themselves in a room, and stay there until they find common ground. The fact that they don’t is a choice.

Minneapolis cares deeply for the historically marginalized. We do not want to see people evicted. We want people to get treatment for substance use disorders and mental illness. But to provide those services sustainably, the city must have the best infrastructure in the region, the best roads, the cleanest streets, high-performing schools, safe neighborhoods, and sensible regulations that allow businesses to thrive. Minneapolis competes on a national scale for conferences, investment, and talent. Overcoming the headwinds facing the city will require a less parochial mindset from its leaders.

Council Meeting Summary

The council passed the drug paraphernalia decriminalization ordinance, known as “Care Over Criminalization,” on a 7-6 vote. Supporters argued that decriminalizing possession, not use, aligns Minneapolis with existing state law, reduces barriers for harm reduction workers, and builds trust with people struggling with addiction. One council member, drawing on his background in street outreach, spoke about how distributing clean supplies opened doors to relationships that eventually helped people find housing and treatment. Opponents raised legitimate concerns: the city’s own deputy city attorney testified that Metro Transit Police actively use the paraphernalia ordinance to respond to drug use complaints at bus shelters and light rail stations, and that it has historically served as a negotiating tool to steer people toward treatment. An amendment to limit decriminalization to marijuana paraphernalia only, floated as a compromise to avoid a mayoral veto, failed 6-7, and the full ordinance passed.

The council also approved a 45-day pre-eviction notice extension, “Pause Eviction, Save Lives,” by a vote of 8-5. The measure was framed as a modest but meaningful response to the economic disruption left by Operation Metro Surge, which left many immigrant renters jobless and afraid to leave their homes. A pointed side debate emerged over whether the city’s rental assistance application portal was actually accessible to people who hadn’t yet received an eviction notice, a problem staff acknowledged and pledged to address. (Note: We were unable to independently verify the claim made by some council members that eviction filings are at near-record levels.)

A proposed moratorium on data centers became the meeting’s most contentious procedural fight. The ordinance, introduced without attached language, as a subject matter only, was postponed to the May 21st meeting pending the conclusion of the state legislative session. Critics warned the moratorium was already sending a chilling signal to investors, citing a downtown building that sold for $235 million after being assessed at $30 million just a year earlier. Supporters argued that large-scale data centers carry serious environmental and energy grid consequences that warrant study before any approvals move forward. A motion to kill the ordinance outright failed, and the broader question of whether subject matter introductions should routinely advance or can be voted down at introduction remains unresolved.

The Payne Letter

After the failed veto override on the Toddrick Barnette nomination, Council Member Palmisano objected to a memo Council President Payne had submitted to the city’s legislative record titled “The City Council’s Vision for Community Safety and Toddrick Barnette’s Failure to Meet That Vision.” Palmisano argued the memo implied a collective position the body never formally adopted, and moved to have it removed. The city clerk confirmed that the council president does not have the authority to speak for the body absent a formal vote, though he acknowledged it is a gray area council presidents frequently have to navigate.

The debate that followed was one of the meeting’s more revealing moments. Several members said they were never consulted and objected to being included, however implicitly, in a document they didn’t author or endorse. Others defended the memo as a reasonable response to the mayor’s public accusation that the council’s rejection of Barnette was politically motivated rather than substantive. The motion to remove the memo failed 6-7. A suggestion to formally adopt it as the council’s official position was declined, with one member cautioning that doing so would effectively create new procedural rules without a proper discussion of council governance. The letter remains in the file.

Positive Notes

A word of recognition for City Clerk Casey Carl, who may have the toughest job in city government. He must explain voting procedures and amendments in real time, keep meetings from unraveling, and address every council member with patience and diplomacy regardless of what’s unfolding around him. We sincerely hope he finds a date for that leadership retreat.

On a lighter note: we spent part of our Saturday morning with Leon Bridges and his song “Beyond.” Recommended listening.

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This newsletter is dedicated to documenting the people, politics, and solutions working to improve Minneapolis. As a two-person operation, writer and editor, we pride ourselves on bringing you a unique perspective that no nonprofit think tank could replicate. We are genuinely grateful to every reader who chooses to support that mission with a paid subscription.

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Occasionally, though, we venture beyond city limits. As much as we’d prefer to ignore Trump and focus on local solutions, it’s been impossible to ignore Operation Metro Surge or his administration’s decision to withhold Medicaid dollars that sustain our hospitals and the recipients who depend on them. Over 303,000 Hennepin County residents, about 22%, depend on Medicaid, and the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services is withholding over $240 million. While the stated justification is fraud and program vulnerabilities, political motivations appear to be at play as well.

This raises a broader question: shouldn’t Minnesota have a State Auditor who is nonpartisan, or at least from outside the party in power? When a single party controls a state without meaningful checks and balances, accountability tends to slip. Consider Rep. Ilhan Omar’s recently amended financial disclosure. She and her husband Tim Mynett originally reported a net worth of between $6 million and $30 million. When faced with a threatened investigation, they amended that figure to between $18,000 and $95,000, a reduction of roughly 99.7%, attributing it to an accounting error.

To anyone who signs off on their taxes each year after reviewing them with a CPA, that explanation is hard to accept. A small business owner making an error of that magnitude would face serious consequences. Yet Omar retains the solid backing of her district and the DFL, which illustrates exactly the kind of tribal protection that entrenched parties provide. Some voters, however, are looking for alternatives.

We aren’t planning to interview every State Auditor candidate, but the hyper-partisanship and weak financial controls we’re currently experiencing give us reason to hear what the Forward Independence Party has to say. Ideally, we’d like to see proportional representation that gives smaller parties a real foothold in government. Until then, an independent voice in the Auditor’s office, one focused on modern data systems and transparent public dashboards rather than party loyalty, could be exactly what Minnesota needs.

Interview Summary

Jay Reeves, a candidate for Minnesota State Auditor running under the Forward Independence Party, brings an unconventional background to the race. Born and raised on the east side of St. Paul to teenage parents, Reeves worked in trucking before joining the Army at age 31, where he rose from enlisted soldier to commissioned officer over 17 years of service. Through the military he earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s in health informatics with a concentration in data analytics from the University of Minnesota. After being diagnosed with stage four cancer in 2022 and retiring as a major in 2023, he found civilian work unsatisfying and decided to channel his skills into public service by running for state auditor.

Reeves’ central pitch is that the State Auditor’s Office needs a data-driven overhaul. He argues that the office has historically relied on a reactive, after-the-fact auditing approach, and that a proactive data analytics mindset — identifying patterns and anomalies before problems escalate — would make government spending far more transparent and accountable. He points to outdated technology, siloed data systems, and the lack of basic data-validation tools as concrete problems he wants to fix and envisions public-facing interactive dashboards that would let any Minnesotan easily track how their city or county is spending money.

On the question of why he’s running as an independent, Reeves is direct: he believes the State Auditor role should be nonpartisan, and that the hyper-partisan environment at the legislature has made it harder — not easier — to seriously address issues like fraud and financial mismanagement. He argues that Minnesotans have allowed political ideology to become personal identity and encourages voters to research individual candidates rather than voting straight-party. His campaign is also a vehicle to grow the Forward Independence Party, which formed last July from a merger of the Independence and Alliance parties, and which Reeves sees as a home for the many Minnesotans who feel left out by the two-party system.

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The major news out of the Hennepin County Attorney’s office this week was the filing of charges against Gregory Donnell Morgan Jr., 34, a federal ICE agent. Morgan faces two counts of second-degree assault for pulling his weapon, a Glock 19 equipped with a laser light, on two people in another vehicle while driving on the shoulder of the Highway 62 and Interstate 35W interchange on February 5. A nationwide warrant has been issued, meaning Morgan would need to be extradited to Hennepin County to face charges.

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What makes this case notable is how prosecutors built it: entirely through State Patrol investigation using traffic camera footage and license plate readers. Morgan has admitted to being the driver. Prosecutors don’t need the federal government to hand over evidence because they already have what they need. That’s a significant contrast to the shootings of Alex Pretti and Renee Good during Operation Metro Surge, where investigators have been stalled waiting on federal cooperation that has yet to materialize.

Each candidate we’ve interviewed in the Hennepin County Attorney’s race has expressed a commitment to holding the federal agents involved in those shootings accountable. But with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche showing no signs of being more cooperative — or more willing to investigate internally — than his predecessor, the realistic timeline for charges in those cases could stretch years, if charges ever come at all.

That gap between what justice demands and what the federal government is willing to provide is discussed in my conversation with Matt Pelikan, who joins the podcast fresh from the DFL Senior Caucus debate. Several debate attendees told us they were struck by the depth of the candidate field. Better Minneapolis has interviewed each candidate in the race, and we’ll be reporting on the June 13 Hennepin County convention. Matt sees a through line in his career of holding the powerful to account, and says that drive is a core reason he’s running.

Summary

Matt Pelikan is a lifelong Minnesotan and 14-year litigator who clerked on the Minnesota Supreme Court and has a background in progressive politics, having worked for campaigns including Paul Wellstone, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. He decided to run for Hennepin County Attorney because he believes the office needs a leader who can thread the needle between criminal justice reform and real public safety — rejecting what he calls “trench warfare” between the pro-reform and tough-on-crime camps. He supported current Attorney Mary Moriarty four years ago but feels her tenure has stumbled, particularly in how she has managed relationships with law enforcement and rolled out policy changes without adequate stakeholder buy-in.

On the major issues, Pelikan takes a pragmatic approach. He believes race should play no role in charging or sentencing decisions, that clearance rates (particularly the roughly 1% rate for car thefts) represent a serious failure, and that youth diversion programs have merit but must be balanced against accountability for repeat or violent offenders. On Operation Metro Surge and the ICE raids, he argued that charges should have been brought more quickly, citing the lesson from the Biden/Garland era that delayed accountability carries a real political and community cost. He also expressed frustration that the constitutional challenges ahead shouldn’t be used as an excuse for inaction. According to Pelikan:

And I personally refuse to believe that with the hundreds of eyewitnesses, hundreds or thousands of hours of footage, there isn’t a single use of force case ready to charge.

And I think that if we have one lesson from the past five years with Joe Biden and Merrick Garland, that there’s a real cost to waiting for accountability.

And this idea that we’re just going to drag things out for years at a time and make sure we do it right, actually is a bad idea.

Pelikan’s overarching message is that progressive cities must be safe, livable places or they risk undermining the broader project of progressive governance. He emphasized that rebuilding trust with the county’s 34 police departments starts with basic respect and communication — something he believes Moriarty failed to do — while still holding officers accountable when they break the law. He frames his candidacy as a common-sense alternative to the pendulum swings that have defined recent criminal justice debates and is seeking the DFL endorsement at the June 13th convention.

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This interview with David Fhima comes at a critical time for Minneapolis restaurants and businesses. Restaurants in particular are feeling the pressure of rising wages, food costs, and property taxes. Add to those challenges a shift in lifestyle, less drinking, more nights at home, and it’s easy to understand why a concerted effort from the city is needed to rehabilitate Minneapolis’s reputation. We need people from outside the city, both from our suburbs and from across the country, to see Minneapolis as safe, vibrant, and worth a visit.

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It’s our reputation that needs burnishing. As Fhima puts it, “charity begins at home. Take care of home.” That sentiment is widely shared, and it’s why so many residents have expressed frustration over recent efforts to bring back bathhouses, decriminalize drug paraphernalia, and pass resolutions about Cuba and foreign banks. People want their city government laser-focused on repairing the damage done during Operation Metro Surge. But even before the surge, residents were feeling the effects of high taxes, rising costs, and a general sense of disorder.

Many restaurants along Lake Street have closed or are operating in survival mode. In addition, several restaurants considered cornerstones of their neighborhoods have closed recently, including the Lowry, Pajarito, D’Amico & Sons, and Sunstreet Bread. As we write this, we’re learning that 801 Chophouse on Nicollet has filed for bankruptcy protection. These weren’t pop-up restaurants taking a chance; these were established businesses with loyal patrons and a proven product. As Fhima notes, restaurants rarely close for a single reason, it’s usually a confluence of factors. But for those of us who frequented these places, their closings have created a creeping sense of dread about the city’s future. Our elected officials often seem oblivious to the perceived decline and appear to have priorities out of step with the majority of residents.

Recent actions by the city council feel transactional. Rather than focusing on the health of the city as a whole, they appear focused on serving specific subsets of constituents without considering how those choices color perceptions more broadly. These groups represent votes and campaign support, which in our current system can be enough to win a council seat with fewer than 4,000 total votes. It's reminiscent of the U.S. Senate, where a senator from North Dakota represents 780,000 constituents while a senator from California represents over 39 million, a structural imbalance that rewards catering to a narrow base rather than governing for everyone. Minneapolis might be best served by abandoning this model in favor of proportional representation.

Most restaurants and businesses cannot survive on their immediate neighborhood alone, they need people coming into the city or traveling across it to achieve the volume required to stay open. That reality demands a city government oriented toward more than narrow constituencies. We need elected leaders aligned around a common goal: improving Minneapolis’s reputation throughout the state and the country. Building a marketing campaign around the vague concept of “neighboring” isn’t going to do it. Neither will a listing in the Michelin Guide. What’s required is a change of attitude, fewer rigid definitions of who’s “in” and who’s “out,” and far more signs of open-armed welcoming.

We must come together as a city committed to seeing more “just opened” signs than “sorry to say, after many years, we’re closing.” The entire city loses if we don’t recognize the urgency.

Interview Summary

David Fhima has seen a lot in his 30-plus years in the Twin Cities restaurant business, the 2008 financial crash, COVID, the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. But he says the current moment feels different, and more fragile. Born in Casablanca to a French-Moroccan-Spanish mother and a Sicilian father, Fhima came to the U.S. speaking little English, knocked on a French restaurant door, and never looked back. Today he runs a portfolio of Minneapolis institutions including Maison Margaux, Motherdough, and Vagabondo in Excelsior. It’s that last one that tells a telling story: doing business in Excelsior, he says, costs 30 to 40 percent less than in Minneapolis. The political climate there is simply more encouraging for business, and he’s not afraid to say so.

On the economics of running a restaurant in the city, Fhima is direct without being bitter. Restaurants operate on thin margins, and when regulations designed for corporations get applied to a tipped-wage industry, those margins disappear. He’s not opposed to fair wages or worker protections, he wants them, but he wants city and state policymakers to actually understand the industry before writing rules for it. For example, the fees that restaurants charged to cover employee health insurance are no longer permitted with little acknowledgment of what they accomplished. Alcohol sales are down 40 to 60 percent. Inflation has made it impossible to raise menu prices fast enough to keep pace with rising costs. Any one of these things is manageable, he says. Together, they create a perfect storm.

But Fhima’s deepest concern isn’t regulatory, it’s cultural. He describes a growing trend of customers choosing restaurants based on perceived political affiliation, leaving fake reviews as acts of protest, and staying out of Minneapolis entirely because they feel unwelcome. Suburban diners who might once have come downtown aren’t coming. Downtown residents who might drive out to the lake aren’t going. The polarization that has fractured civic life, he argues, has now crossed the threshold into the dining room, and most chefs he knows see it but are too afraid of a boycott to say so. His ask is simple: remember that restaurants are where division ends, not where it starts. People of every background, belief, and politics have always come together over a meal, and if Minneapolis wants to recover, economically and culturally, that’s a good place to begin.

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Council Member Stevenson was endorsed by the DSA and is unabashedly pro-union and pro-environment. He wants more compassion and services for people experiencing homelessness, believes more can be done on police reform, and wants to see new revenue streams for the city. Whether or not readers agree with his positions, you’ll find that he is sincere in his beliefs, and for those willing to approach him with openness, he’ll offer the same respect in return.

If you’re watching hoping for confrontation, you’ll be disappointed. That’s not our style. There are already plenty of voices out there drawing viewers with sarcasm, emotional triggers, and outrage. We are of the mindset that Minneapolis is facing serious issues, and finding workable solutions requires setting aside our own beliefs, or those of our tribe, long enough to genuinely listen. There has to be room for negotiation. We should expect our leaders to be making trade-offs: agreeing to move forward on drug paraphernalia decriminalization while tabling the bathhouse ordinance, for example, or funding road repairs in exchange for a two-year pause on the Community Safety Training and Wellness Center. These are illustrations, not recommendations, but they represent the kind of honest prioritization we’d like to see more of from the mayor and council members alike.

What’s at stake is real. We’ve seen in our own neighborhood not only how people leave the city to shop, visit the doctor, and commute to work, but how they’re choosing to move their families to the suburbs for better schools, lower crime rates, and more housing options. Constant factional battles risk accelerating that flight.

Safe Outdoor Spaces

One topic we didn’t get to in the interview was the Safe Outdoor Spaces ordinance, and we were reminded of it while driving on 4th Avenue near the Electric Fetus. About six trucks and RVs are parked along the street that appear to be people’s homes. Seeing them made us wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to have a designated place in the city where people in that situation could park, somewhere with shared facilities, water, and trash service. There are legitimate questions about such a policy: where would it go, and what happens if it becomes an open-air drug market? But those obstacles are worth working through, because the alternative is letting six beat-up RVs become twelve, until someone is shot, a fire breaks out, or there’s a drug overdose. And there’s a building nearby currently for sale that seems unlikely to attract a buyer as long as there’s a homeless encampment across the street.

Before Safe Outdoor Spaces gets dismissed as unrealistic, it would be worth holding a community forum, similar to what was done for George Floyd Square. Other cities have had success with these programs, though they may require tougher enforcement for those who don’t utilize the spaces and services provided. Council Members Chavez, Chughtai, and Chowdhury have introduced this proposal, and they have an open invitation to join us on the show. We agree with Council Member Stevenson that homelessness must be near the top of the city’s priorities, and no solution should be dismissed without sincere engagement. It’s too complicated, and the stakes are too high, to assume any one person, think tank, or nonprofit has the silver bullet.

Interview Summary

Ward 8 Council Member Soren Stevenson is three months into what he describes as a difficult but rewarding start. Beginning his term the day before Renee Good was killed on the border of his ward, Stevenson has been thrown into some of the city’s most pressing issues from day one. On the question of low-level crimes like car break-ins and auto theft, a top concern for many residents, he says the problem often involves minors, and that while police have developed more effective tactics to track perpetrators, the longer-term solution requires investment in youth programming and community supports. He draws a direct line from the collapse of those supports during COVID to the crime wave that followed, and argues the city needs to step up even where the issue technically falls under county jurisdiction.

Two major votes dominated our conversation. On the denial of Commissioner Barnette’s re-nomination, Stevenson was direct: the city’s highest-paid employee oversaw a $20 million police budget overrun and a $7 million fire department overrun, and didn’t know it was happening until the end of the year. Combined with a damning AFSCME letter citing workplace culture concerns, Stevenson said his bar for a $300,000-a-year position is simply higher. On the proposed drug paraphernalia decriminalization ordinance, which was tabled for further discussion, he pushed back on the idea that it signals tolerance for drug use. The city, he noted, is already paying organizations to do harm reduction work while simultaneously treating that work as illegal. “Which is it going to be?” he asked.

On the bigger picture of Minneapolis’s financial health and identity, Stevenson was candid about the challenges ahead. The city over-relies on property taxes compared to peer cities, revenue is shrinking while spending grows, and too many storefronts sit vacant while property owners wait for top dollar. He’s interested in tools like a land value tax and streamlining the business permitting process to make Minneapolis more attractive to entrepreneurs. On the proposed Community Safety Training and Wellness Center, he’s not opposed to the concept but clear that $40 million is the wrong spend at the wrong time when homelessness, housing, and public safety demand priority. And on Operation Metro Surge, he’s proud of the $3.8 million in rental assistance and $7 million in small business support the city has provided, but says flatly that it isn’t enough given the scale of the need.

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Next in our interview series: chef and restaurateur David Fhima joins us, along with three candidates on the November ballot — Matt Pelikan running for Hennepin County Attorney, Jay Reeves of the Forward Independence Party running for State Auditor, and Marion Greene seeking re-election to the District 3 County Commission.

That dynamic has found a comfortable home in politics. Since the flood of content creators arrived during Operation Metro Surge, we’ve noticed a sharp uptick in politicians taking to Instagram and other platforms to get their message out, unfiltered, unedited, and directly to voters. The results can be impressive. AOC has 9.6 million Instagram followers. New York City’s newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary and general election on the strength of smart, funny, and genuinely compelling social media videos, has her beat with 11.4 million. He set a standard that will be difficult to match.

But here in Minneapolis, we find ourselves asking a different question: does the rush to go viral and dunk on opponents actually serve democracy? Shannon Watson, executive director of Majority in the Middle, has been watching this dynamic play out up close at the Minnesota Capitol, and she wrote about it in her MinnPost column, “Middle Aisle: Social Media is Polluting the Minnesota Legislature.” Her argument is pointed: when legislators spend more energy performing for their feeds than negotiating in good faith, passing bills and balancing budgets becomes harder for everyone. We sat down with Watson to find out what it’s actually costing the Capitol.

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Interview Summary

Shannon Watson explains that the problem isn’t abstract, it’s personal. When colleagues post attacks on each other, or when party caucus accounts amplify those attacks under an official banner, it becomes nearly impossible for legislators to negotiate in good faith. She describes a culture where the incentive to perform for social media has begun to outweigh the incentive to actually legislate, particularly in an election year where all 201 legislative seats are on the ballot and the endorsement caucus process rewards ideological purity over compromise.

Watson introduced two key concepts from her article. The first is the idea that “we are all trackers now”, a reference to the campaign operatives once hired to follow opponents with cameras. Today, every legislator operates knowing that any hallway remark or floor speech can be clipped and weaponized by anyone with a smartphone. The second is “moral framing,” the tendency to present policy debates as having an absolute right and wrong answer, which performs well on social media but makes compromise nearly impossible. She argues that when legislators stake out moral positions publicly, they box themselves in and make it harder to do the negotiating that governing actually requires.

On solutions, Watson is clear-eyed but not pessimistic. She points to legislators like Senator Julia Coleman (R-Waconia) and former Senator Matt Little (DFL-Lakeville) as examples of people willing to publicly reject negativity, though she acknowledges Little lost his race after doing so, which doesn’t exactly encourage others to follow suit. Her core argument is that what gets rewarded is what will continue, meaning citizens have more power than they realize. A simple thank-you email to a legislator who chose collaboration over combat can send a signal that civility has an audience. She also stresses the importance of consuming news from diverse, editorially accountable sources rather than relying on social media feeds that are algorithmically designed to reinforce what you already believe.

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The Jobs Report

Job seekers and stock traders alike watch the federal jobs report. On Friday, April 3, the latest report was released and there are several items that should concern anyone invested in the Twin Cities. Axios reported that we lost 2,000 jobs in January, expected, given the immigration tactics of the federal government. The Sahan Journal reported that 1,700 of the approximately 4,000 arrested during Operation Metro Surge have been deported. Unless there is a new influx of people to the area, these jobs will either disappear or remain unfilled.

For the first time since May 2007, Minnesota’s unemployment rate is now higher than the national average, 4.4% compared to the national figure of 4.3%. The local picture is even more concerning. In January, the public sector added 1,000 jobs while the private sector lost 900. In other words, the jobs paid with tax dollars increased while the jobs that generate tax revenue decreased. This trend is compounded by a sobering finding reported by David Schultz in the Minneapolis Times:

Between 2016 and 2026, the commercial and industrial estimated market value of property in Minneapolis, the assessed value of office buildings, retail centers, hotels, and industrial facilities that anchors a large share of the city’s tax base, fell in inflation-adjusted terms from $13.1 billion to an estimated $9.4 billion. That is a real-dollar decline of roughly 28 percent over a decade.

The taxes needed to support city services are quietly shifting from commercial real estate to homeowners. Both the rotation from private to public sector jobs and the erosion of commercial tax revenue are significant warning signs that the financial house is far from in order.

Shoring Up the Foundation

When we say math is nonpartisan, we mean it, neither party’s track record on fiscal discipline is clean. Government spending more than it collects in taxes generates debt. That is true whether budgets are passed by Republicans or Democrats.

In Minnesota and Minneapolis, we have DFL representation. If government grows while the tax base shrinks, the result is deficit spending. There are two ways to avoid this: reduce what government spends, or increase tax revenue. Combining both would have a multiplier effect. New revenue tools, like the proposed social media tax from Gov. Walz, could play a role. But new revenue alone cannot carry the load if the private sector continues to contract.

Residents want rental assistance, homeless services, education, disability care, transportation, parks, public safety, and a solvent Hennepin Healthcare. These are not unreasonable asks, but they require a tax base capable of supporting them. That tax base depends on a thriving private sector, and right now that sector is shrinking.

To build confidence in Minneapolis, leaders must at least acknowledge the importance of the economy, but it seems a distant priority. Any organization or politician that speaks up for businesses in the city risks being labeled a Republican, their reputation attacked in a toxic wasteland of social media. That chilling effect is itself an economic problem.

For Minneapolis to thrive again, we need all stakeholders focused on jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Those come when the math works in Minneapolis's favor, when businesses can look at this city and conclude, without hesitation, that the opportunity here outweighs the risk. As tempting as it may be to engage in international affairs, we must remain focused on our own backyard and rebuilding the foundational elements that help everyone.

Rebuilding Together

Operation Metro Surge unleashed urban warfare in our streets. The bravery, caring, and mutual aid networks residents demonstrated to assist those in need have inspired many around the world. We recognize that while enforcement has slowed, many remain in jeopardy and relief efforts are ongoing. But we must begin to rebuild. We will have to prioritize and work together on complicated budgets even when we disagree. Our health care, education, and safety net programs are strained to the point of breaking.

Having to move your family because you cannot find a job is a trauma that hurts families and weakens the social fabric. Over and over again, we must be asking: How do we attract businesses here? What incentives can we create to bring high-paying private sector jobs back to Minneapolis?

We cannot keep adding public sector jobs while losing private sector ones. The math doesn’t add up. It never has. Saying yes to Minneapolis is itself an act of confidence. And right now, that confidence is exactly what this city needs most.

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