If this charter amendment gets on the ballot I want the new department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention to have a division of Shutting Down Lyndale. Led by someone with #BanCars experience.
I've thought this for a long time. Every car is a potential getaway car. The only person in your life you can really trust is a pedestrian.
The last thing we need is someone from Andover coming into the city with a trunk full of space for who knows what. I hear it on the news all the time and I still don't know where Andover is.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
If you ask me, I say these recent well-attended Uptown Association meetings are secretly guerilla urbanist pranks intended to prove even the most cranked up "parking shortage" grievance-havers can find a place to park.
A thread from earlier tonight.
Tangled web: The PAC "We Heart Minneapolis" had a table at the Uptown Association meeting. The PAC and the Uptown Association have the same chair, Andrea Corbin.
At the start, Corbin promoted tomorrow's caucuses. She donated to the MN GOP less than a year ago and now she's at the helm of a $600k effort to turn people out to the DFL caucus.
Old Man Jeremiah Ellison talking about the old days at city hall (again). Says current government structure is an obstacle to communication, keeps everyone from getting on the same page. As a result the city is less effective at addressing big problems like homeless encampments.
Ellison on how pre-2021 government helped create a common understanding of a problem: Council members wouldn't "just get a staff report, they'd maybe be in a meeting where it's dawning on you... we thought that was gonna work but it's not gonna work."
Ellison: If that discussion doesn't occur, we're constantly gonna have council members trying to solve this issue from the dais, Frey admin being a little bit obstructionist - and continue to have disagreements.
Dumbest news you'll hear all day: Longtime organizers of the Uptown Art Fair—a pedestrian fair—say they will no longer hold their event due to city pedestrianizing Hennepin Ave. audacy.com/wccoradio/news…
My impression has always been that the Uptown Association's whole reason for existing was the art fair. So we're lucky they didn't pack up in a huff, take Uptown with them, and define New Uptown as 2 blocks in any direction from the Bachman's parking lot.
I'm gonna need them to diagram how the new medians on Hennepin make it impossible to set up and sell art. More likely they wanted to bail on Uptown and needed a reason that felt politically satisfying.
There was extended debate over whether the fee should be left at $452 per ton or changed to TBD, pending staff analysis. Council left it at $452.
Even so, appears there is no disagreement that the fee amount will be amended by July 1, 2025.
Procedural objections may obscure what this is really about: the council forcing an issue where the mayor and his administration wanted to move slower. The result is carbon fees in 2025 instead of 2026.
Something I've been warning about all year has finally happened. Mayor Frey has hired his pal Lisa Goodman to fill a role that was created for her in last year's budget — voted on while she was still a council member.
Goodman starts work Monday as the city's Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Office of Public Service. You can imagine folks at CPED are breathing a sigh of relief she won't be housed in their department.
That's an email announcement from Brett Hjelle (rhymes with "jelly" not "hellyessy"), the city's deputy COO. If you believe the interview process was "rigorous and thorough" — hahaha, good one.