Better Minneapolis Podcast

Let the Summer of Consternation Begin

Memorial Day is here and with it the unofficial beginning of summer. You can now wear white. For some, the start of summer is the solstice, which this year falls on Sunday, June 21. But don’t let the sunshine fool you. When it comes to cooperation and progress at City Hall, there isn’t the joy of sunshine and festivals that come with the season. Minneapolis City Hall continues to be where dark clouds of disagreement and stagnation hover, a perpetual storm waiting to break. As with our national politics, the upside for cooperation is limited. Donors and votes follow the uncompromising members of government. Minneapolis residents eager for progress on public safety and improved economic conditions are advised to lower their expectations. It will be a long 3½ years if you place your hopes on significant strides occurring in what appears to be a council and mayor who live in different cities. The back and forth between the mayor and city council over the nomination of Community Safety Commissioner Toddrick Barnette is an appropriate symbol for the current situation. The city council voted 7-6 for a second time not to approve his nomination, but instead of sending the motion back to Frey for a potential third veto, it was moved into administrative hibernation. At this point, it’s unclear how long Barnette will retain his job. In an odd twist, Wonsley initiated a motion to begin a new nationwide replacement search, but because Ward 8 council member Soren Stevenson abstained from voting, the motion failed with a 6-6 vote. We’re interested to hear why he chose to abstain and will report on his position when we learn more.Let’s pretend for a moment that he had voted with Wonsley to begin a search. Who do they think is going to step up and apply? Yes, the $374,000 salary is the highest in the city, but the gauntlet of criticism and second-guessing that anyone in this role must endure is substantial. The same uncertainty extends to the police chief. Chief Brian O’Hara’s renomination has been assigned to the Public Health, Safety, & Equity Committee with no set schedule for when a public hearing and vote will take place. However, if the questioning from Ward 10 council member Aisha Chughtai is any indicator, the odds of a smooth approval are low. He was repeatedly asked about exceeding his budget, including on food and beverage, parking, advertising, and overtime. Chughtai isn’t the only council member unsupportive of him. It’s quite possible the city will end up searching for both a new Police Chief and Commissioner of Community Safety. The disruption to progress on reform and safety will be substantial, and the search costly. The motion to spend $6 million for the purpose of purchasing land in the Windom neighborhood of South Minneapolis for a new Community Safety Wellness & Training Center was also voted down in a 7-6 vote. AI Debate Heats Up the Room A development award, a decade-old building dispute, and a city council moratorium on data centers may seem unrelated, but all three reveal the same underlying problem: Minneapolis has no coherent plan for ensuring that public investment, whether in nonprofits or private industry, delivers sustainable results.Start with the nonprofits. None of the three major civic development projects currently underway has a credible path to self-sufficiency. Agape Movement will be awarded development rights for the Peoples’ Way if approved by the city council, where they will be tasked with assembling a team to raise funds, design, and build. Their proposal is available online. [https://www.minneapolismn.gov/government/programs-initiatives/38th-chicago/peoples-way/#d.en.180667]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) [https://www.startribune.com/east-phillips-activists-strike-deal-over-hard-fought-roof-depot-urban-farm/601846877]: the nonprofit will spend $6 million in state-granted funds to buy half the building, while the city retains the other half with no current plans for it. The agreement will allow EPNI to pursue their long-held goal of creating an urban farm on the site. Then there is the Rise Up Center, slated for the former YWCA on Hennepin Avenue. All three projects share the same vulnerability: continued dependence on public grants and the goodwill of politicians. The current track record of Minnesota politicians providing adequate oversight of nonprofit finances and operations is poor, which makes it difficult for us to have confidence in these endeavors.That’s the nonprofit sector. What about private industry? At Thursday’s city council meeting, the first several hours were consumed with a debate over data centers and the creeping role that AI plays in our lives. We fully understand the skepticism, we are as tired as anyone of every program asking whether we want AI assistance. The council stepped back from a full one-year moratorium and adopted a six-month moratorium on data centers over 350,000 square feet, with a public hearing scheduled for mid-June. This debate reflects a national concern about how AI is reshaping the job market. The conversation about how Minneapolis and Minnesota prepare for this technological shift has only just begun.The moratorium on its own is unlikely to keep investors away from Minneapolis. The same could be said of the concrete median running down Hennepin Avenue, it alone didn't cause Red Cow to close. What concerns us is the cumulative effect of decisions and policies that appear to discount the importance of private investment and business to the city's health. High taxes, heavy regulation, and persistent public discord between the mayor and city council are deterrents. These and other debates about non-core issues feed an impression of instability and unpredictability that compounds over time. When someone is weighing where to relocate a business or a family, they are increasingly passing on Minneapolis.The city we moved to 20 years ago looks different from the one that exists today. The schools are struggling. Downtown buildings are no longer generating the taxes they once did. Unemployment runs higher than the national average. City governance appears to be in disarray. For our meeting downtown we rode the bus. Afterwards, we went to write in the library. It required navigating past multiple unhoused individuals asleep in the library, others screaming into cell phones about court dates, and on the way home, a woman nodding off in the bus aisle. Minneapolis needs to take its reputation seriously.The city needs a coherent plan for improving its reputation and attracting the kind of businesses that create jobs. Watching City Hall, we’re confident the plan won’t originate there. What might be more effective is a private group of civic leaders empowered to draft a plan without concern for pleasing the interest groups on which politicians depend. Given the pace of change, particularly with AI, that plan must take shape within the next few years. The choice Minneapolis must make is whether to be known for its foresight or remembered for its infighting. Thank you for listening and caring about Minneapolis. This is a public episode. 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The Minneapolis Car vs. Bike Debate

Monday night at the VFW in Uptown, a familiar argument played out. Residents gathered to review reconstruction plans for Lyndale Avenue, and the room quickly divided along predictable lines. Business owners raised concerns about extended construction timelines, reduced parking, and a concrete median that would make their already-struggling storefronts harder to reach. On the other side, advocates pushed for road designs that promote alternatives to driving, such as buses, bikes, and foot traffic, arguing that changing infrastructure is how you change behavior. The debate spilled onto social media before the night was over, bringing with it the usual taunts and high-minded proclamations. 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 [https://whyy.org/articles/climate-reality-check-global-carbon-pollution-up-in-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. Thank you for listening and caring about Minneapolis. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe [https://www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Saying there is a “shared vision” doesn’t make it so

On Thursday, May 14, Mayor Frey announced that Agape Movement [https://www.theagapemovement.com/team] was his choice to be the city’s development partner for the Peoples’ Way. Our research has found no evidence that the group has the “relevant experience” or “financial qualifications” necessary for managing a multi-million-dollar project of this scope. Response to the choice has been criticized by several council and community members, and based on what we’ve found, we understand why. 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 [https://www.startribune.com/minneapolis-taps-violence-interrupter-group-agape-to-redevelop-key-site-at-george-floyd-square/601842700] 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. --- Thank you for reading and caring about Minneapolis. 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. This is a public episode. 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Roots, Result, and Collaboration

Introduction 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 [https://open.substack.com/pub/betterminneapolis/p/minneapolis-cant-do-it-alone?r=304p16&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web]. Two other candidates, Kevin Chavis and Abdihakim Ibrahim, have also announced. 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe [https://www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

No Medal for the Wounded

This essay is for all the mothers with cracked hands, scarred bellies and breasts, and fantasies of what life might have been like without children. 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. 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 f*****g 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. Thank you for reading and caring. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe [https://www.betterminneapolis.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]