Star Tribune
Secede from Hennepin County? The north metro city of Champlin is considering it.
Officials in the north metro city of Champlin say they are frustrated with Hennepin County’s lack of responsiveness to their city’s needs and are contemplating a dramatic solution: attempting to secede from Hennepin County.
Champlin, which is across the Mississippi River from Anoka County, has a population of 23,000.
“As mayor, I’m extremely serious [that] something needs to happen,” said Ryan Sabas, Champlin’s mayor, in an email. “We can’t keep paying in without a return here in Champlin.”
Sabas said the city first discussed the idea Monday in a council work session because of Champlin’s “inability to gain any ground” in getting Hennepin County to help fund capital improvement projects — particularly road projects — the city desperately needs. Still, any bid to sever Champlin from Hennepin County faces significant legal hurdles.
Champlin, Sabas said, is getting no money from the county over the next four years for any capital projects. The city has asked to partner with the county on road projects multiple times without success, he said, mentioning a proposal to share the cost of constructing a roundabout at the intersection of French Lake Road and County Road 121.
Dayton Road, West River Road and Winnetka Avenue “are all inadequate when it comes to use and safety,” he said.
“Time and time again, Hennepin County fails to be a partner in any capital projects, even when it comes to their own infrastructure,” Sabas said. “Where are Champlin’s share of county tax dollars going?”
Joining Anoka County would be the most logical option, Sabas said, but the city hasn’t had any formal conversations with county officials there. And a Hennepin County spokeswoman said officials have had no outreach yet from Champlin.
Anoka County spokesman Erik Thorson confirmed in an email that the county has not discussed the issue with Champlin leaders and noted that “the process of altering county jurisdictions is complex and should be approached with careful consideration of the interests and needs of all involved parties.”
The point of the work session was to find out if secession is even an option, Sabas said, and determine how to improve the city’s relationship with Hennepin County so the county can see the “inequities that are occurring year after year.”
There was no direction given to city staff at the work session, he said, and next steps include simply having more conversations on the topic. After that, one step might be to form a resident commission to weigh pros and cons of secession.
Hennepin County spokeswoman Carolyn Marinan said in a statement that the county “wasn’t aware of what transpired” at Champlin’s meeting this week.
“We have had numerous conversations over this past year with city officials about transportation, other issues and opportunities,” she said. “We value Champlin and all our city partners and residents in Hennepin County.”
It’s not clear what steps Champlin would take if it does decide to attempt to leave Hennepin County.
Sabas said that according to the city’s attorneys, one option would be to get Champlin’s legislative delegation to sponsor a bill related to Champlin seceding from Hennepin County. But that idea is unrealistic, Sabas said.
Another possibility would require Champlin to get 25% of the voters in the last Hennepin and Anoka county elections to petition for a secession question to appear on both county’s ballots, he said.
“That would be a very huge undertaking,” he said
In 2000, Pine County — about 60 miles north of St. Paul — tried to create a new county but 78% of voters were against the idea, a Champlin memo said.
Sabas said officials from other outer suburbs of Hennepin County also feel they get “stiffed on funding” from the county.
Dennis Fisher, mayor of Dayton, said though he thinks the secession idea is a little far-fetched, his city has similar concerns about county support for road work and other projects.
“I know exactly where [Champlin] is coming from and my guess is a lot of the municipalities on the north side [of the county] would say the same thing,” Fisher said.
“We dump a lot of revenue into the county,” he said, citing the city’s median home value of almost $500,000.
The county seems focused on core cities and suburbs, he said.
“It just seems like the county is slow to come to the table,” Fisher said.
He told a Champlin City Council member to keep him posted on what their city figures out, because several council members in Dayton would probably consider the secession idea.
“I know the residents would take a serious look at it,” he said.
“I honestly think he used to understand how tariffs work,” Cuban said. “Back in the 90s and early 2000s, he was a little bit coherent when he talked about trade policy and he actually made a little bit of sense. But I don’t know what happened to him.”
Speaking in Pittsburgh on Thursday, Trump’s running mate, Ohio Republican Sen. JD Vance, pushed back against the Harris campaign’s claims that tariffs would hurt the economy. Vance described the tariffs as a way of discouraging imports and boosting American manufacturing.
“If you are a business, and you rely on foreign slave labor at $3 a day, the only way to rebuild American manufacturing is to say, if you want to bring that product made by slave labor back into the United States of America, you’re going to pay a big fat tariff before you get it back into our country,” Vance said.
Back in Wisconsin, Amara Marshell, freshman at UW-La Crosse, said she showed up to support Harris because she is concerned about what a second Trump presidency could mean for reproductive rights. Like her friend, sophomore Avery Black, Marshell is also excited about the possibility of electing the nation’s first female president.
“Women deserve to have power over their own bodies,” Marshell said. “We shouldn’t have to not be able to get an abortion just because of a president.”
Mary Holman, an 80-year-old retiree from Fort Atkinson, Wis., said she hasn’t been to a rally since former President Barack Obama’s first campaign in 2008. But Holman said she decided to get off the sidelines this cycle because she views the election as a fight to preserve democracy.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources will auction off state lands in popular northern counties next month.
The public land — in Aitkin, Cook, Itasca, and St. Louis counties — will go up for sale during the Department of Natural Resource’s annual online public land sale from Nov. 7 to 21.
“These rural and lakeshore properties may appeal to adjacent landowners or offer recreational opportunities such as space for a small cabin or camping,” the DNR said in a statement.
Properties will be available for bidding Nov. 7 through Nov. 21.
This all can trim for print: The properties include:
40 acres in Aitkin County, with a minimum bid of $85,000
44 acres in Cook County, minimum bid $138,000
1.9 acres in Itasca County, minimum bid $114,000
Minneapolis city officials say razor wire, concrete barriers and fencing will be removed from around the former Third Precinct police station – which was set ablaze by protesters after George Floyd’s police killing – in the next three weeks. The burned-out vestibule will be removed within three months with construction fencing to be erected closer to the building.
This week, Minneapolis City Council members have expressed frustration that four years after the protests culminated in a fire at the police station, the charred building still stands and has become a “prop” some conservatives use to rail against city leadership. Most recently, GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance made a stop outside the building and criticized Gov. Tim Walz’s handling of the 2020 riots.
On Thursday, the council voted 8-3 to approve a resolution calling for “immediate cleanup, remediation, and beautification of the 3000 Minnehaha site including but not limited to the removal of fencing, jersey barriers, barbed wire, and all other exterior blight.”
Council Member Robin Wonsley said the city needs to acknowledge that many police officers stationed in the Third Precinct “waged racist and violent actions” against residents for decades.
Council Member Aurin Chowdhury said the council wants the building cleaned up and beautified “immediately.”
“We cannot allow for this corner to be a backdrop for those who wish to manipulate the trauma of our city for political gain,” Chowdhury said.
Council Member Katie Cashman said the council shouldn’t be divided by “right-wing figures posing in front of the Third Precinct and pandering to conservative interests.”
“It’s really important for us to stay united in our goal, to achieve rehabilitation of this site in a way that advances racial healing and acknowledgement of the past trauma in this community, and to not let those figures divide us here,” she said.
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