Star Tribune
Woodbury City Council violated open meetings law with vote on school officers, state says
The Woodbury City Council violated the state’s Open Meeting Law when it met in closed session Sept. 6 to vote on a suspension of its contract providing city police officers to serve as school resource officers at two area high schools, according to a ruling from the state Department of Administration.
The council’s justification for the closed meeting — that it might get sued for breaking its contract with the local school district — did not meet the threshold set by the state’s open meeting law for going into a closed session, according to an opinion issued Nov. 14 by Department of Administration Commissioner Tamar Gronvall.
The council’s action was prompted by a new state law that went into effect this summer that says students cannot be held in a prone position or subjected to “comprehensive restraint on the head, neck and across most of the torso.” The provisions of the new law drew questions from some police agencies and from the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, which directed its members to be wary of school assignments until the association could learn more about what the law meant.
The city and others understood the law to mean that school resource officers could not use physical force except in very limited circumstances, and that use of force might lead to a lawsuit, said Woodbury City Attorney Kevin Sandstrom on Sept. 27 while reviewing the council’s decision.
After Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison issued guidance that said the law does not limit “the types of reasonable force that may be used by public officers to carry out their lawful duties,” the city voted to restore the school resource officer positions at Woodbury and East Ridge high schools.
The state’s Open Meeting Law doesn’t specifically say that meetings can be closed to discuss pending litigation, but it does say in 13D.05, subdivision (3) b that meetings “may” be closed “as permitted by the attorney-client privilege.” That privilege still doesn’t allow a public body to close a meeting due to the threat of litigation by itself according to an earlier ruling from the Minnesota State Supreme Court, Commissioner Gronvall said in the opinion.
“At the time of the discussion there was no threatened or pending litigation,” wrote Gronvall. “Therefore, the public’s right to hear the discussion about the contract outweighed the need for absolute confidentiality.” Gronvall further faulted the council for taking a vote in closed session to temporarily suspend the school resource officer positions at the high schools, saying that a public body should return to open session when it takes votes.
City Administrator Clinton Gridley said in a statement that city officials received the notice from the state that it had violated the open meetings law, and “are working with our legal counsel to gain further understanding.”
“The Woodbury City Council fully believed it had a good-faith legal basis to go into closed session on September 6 to address the potential for litigation regarding prematurely breaching the school resource officer contract. This was a complex legal situation that needed to be addressed expediently due to recent changes in state law,” he said.
South Washington County Schools spokesman Shawn Hogendorf said the district didn’t have any comment on the Open Meeting Law violation.
“During the Sept. 27 Woodbury City Council meeting, the City Council approved a resolution allowing the Woodbury SROs to provide service in our schools,” Hogendorf said. “SROs returned to East Ridge and Woodbury high schools on Oct. 2, and have been working in our schools ever since.”
Sen. Nicole Mitchell, DFL-Woodbury, said she helped prepare the information that went to Commissioner Gronvall for consideration of the Open Meeting Law violation. Mitchell, who supported the new law prohibiting student holds, said she became concerned after learning of Woodbury’s plan for a closed session. She said the city, in her opinion, put out “untrue information” and had mischaracterized the legislative process.
The Open Meeting Law complaint said South Washington County Schools attorney Michael Waldspurger told Woodbury’s city attorney that the district had not made a threat of litigation; further, Waldspurger said the council’s SRO discussion should be held in open session for the public’s benefit.
Mitchell said she filed a public records request for minutes of the closed session, but the city responded that it didn’t record the meeting due to attorney-client privilege.
Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan and her daughter were among the throngs Friday as President Joe Biden delivered the apology that many Indigenous Americans thought would never come.
“I think he really said the things that people have been waiting to hear for generations, acknowledged just the horror and trauma of literally having our children stolen from our communities,” said Flanagan, a member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe. “It’s a powerful first step towards healing.”
Hundreds of boarding schools operated in the 19th and 20th centuries, separating Indigenous children from their families and forcing them to assimilate to European ways. Many children were abused, and at least 973 died, according to a report from the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Other Minnesotans reacted similarly to Flanagan, saying they welcomed the apology but that additional action is needed to help Indigenous people move forward.
Anton Treuer, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, wrote in a newsletter that the apology was “a welcome first step on the journey to healing.”
“There is no way to truly right historical injustices for the children buried at Carlisle, Haskell, and other schools, but these words set a new tone for the country and will help heal the anguish so many Natives have carried for so long,” Treuer wrote. “It gives me hope that we can come together to reconcile and heal our troubled nation.”
Sen. Mary Kunesh, DFL-New Brighton, the first Indigenous woman to serve in the state Senate, called Biden’s apology encouraging.
“This recognition of past wrongdoings is an important step towards healing relationships between the United States and the sovereign nations affected by these past systems,” Kunesh said in a statement. “This dark period of American history must be remembered and taught.”
“I have done everything in my power to remedy this situation, and it continues to get more and more violent by the day,” Moturi wrote. “There have been numerous times when I’ve seen Sawchak outside and contacted law enforcement, and there was no response. I am not confident in the pursuit of Sawchak given that Sawchak attacked me, MPD officers had John detained, and despite an HRO and multiple warrants — they still let him go.”
On Friday, five City Council members sent a letter to Mayor Jacob Frey and Police Chief Brian O’Hara expressing their “utter horror at MPD’s failure to protect a Minneapolis resident from a clear, persistent and amply reported threat posed by his neighbor.”
Council Members Andrea Jenkins, Elliott Payne, Aisha Chughtai, Jason Chavez and Robin Wonsley went on to allege that police had failed to submit reports to the County Attorney’s Office despite threats being made with weapons, and at times while Sawchak screamed racial slurs. Sawchak is white and Moturi is Black.
The council members also contend in their letter that the MPD told the County Attorney’s Office that police did not intend to execute the warrant for “reasons of officer safety.”
At a Friday afternoon news conference at MPD’s Fifth Precinct, O’Hara said police had been working to arrest Sawchak since at least April, but “no Minneapolis police officers have had in-person contact with that suspect since the victim in this case has been calling us.” The chief pointed out that Sawchak is mentally ill, has guns and refuses to cooperate “in the dozens of times that police officers have responded to the residence.”
O’Hara put aside the option to carry out “a high-risk warrant based on these factors [and] the likelihood of an armed, violent confrontation where we may have to use deadly force with the suspect.” The preference, he said, was to arrest Sawchak outside his home, but “in this case, this suspect is a recluse and does not come out of the house.”
ROCHESTER – The Federal Transit Administration has green-lighted an $85 million grant supporting the development of the city’s planned Link Bus Rapid Transit system.
The FTA formally announced the grant on Friday during a ceremonial check presentation outside of the Mayo Civic Center, one of the seven stops planned for the bus line. The federal grant will cover about 60% of the project’s estimated $143.4 million price tag, with the remaining funds coming from Destination Medical Center, the largest public-private development project in state history.
Set to go live in 2026, the 2.8-mile Link system will connect downtown Rochester, including Mayo Clinic’s campuses, with a proposed “transit village” that will include parking, hundreds of housing units and a public plaza. The bus line will be the first of its kind outside the Twin Cities — with service running every five minutes during peak hours.
“That means you may not even need to look at a schedule,” said Veronica Vanterpool, deputy administrator for the FTA. “You can just show up at your transit stop and expect the next bus to come in a short time. That is a game changer and a life-transformational experience in transit for those people who are using it and relying on it.”
The planned Second Street corridor is already one of the busiest roads in Rochester, carrying more than 21,800 vehicles a day, and city planners have talked for years about ways to reduce traffic congestion in the city’s downtown. Local officials estimate that the transit line, which will rely on a fleet of all-electric buses, will handle 11,000 riders on its first day of operation and save eight city blocks of parking.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Friday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said the project shows Rochester is thinking strategically about how it handles growth.
“If you just plan the business expansion, and you don’t have the workforce, you don’t have the child care, the housing or the transit, it’s not going to work very well as a lot of communities across the nation have found,” Klobuchar said.
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