Star Tribune
Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, City Council haggle as 2024 spending plan takes shape
A new public safety center on Lake Street, unarmed “safety ambassadors” in several neighborhoods and a boost in funds to address hate crimes were all approved by the Minneapolis City Council on Thursday as members began to work through ideas to reshape Mayor Jacob Frey’s proposed 2024 city budget.
The process, which continues Friday, is raising disagreements between Frey and the 13-member council, who between them offered some four dozen proposals to the Budget Committee charged with shaping the spending plan.
At one point, in an uncommon spectacle, Frey and council members publicly haggled on the record in council chambers over how, when or whether to create three positions to assist people in the throes of domestic violence. That impromptu bargaining session was ultimately set aside — for the day.
Frey most strenuously objects to council plans that would cut positions he proposed in his budget. They include eight new positions in human resources; without them, Frey said, efforts to hire people across city departments are in jeopardy. And without at least five new positions to implement a vision to reimagine policing, he said, that work will stall.
Frey and the council must agree on the budget before the end of the year. A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday in City Hall.
The bulk of Frey’s proposed $1.8 billion spending plan, which he unveiled in August, will remain untouched. But the 48 budget amendments proposed by council members amount to millions of dollars of potential spending on high-profile programs, including public safety efforts by unarmed people, and retention and recruitment efforts for 911 personnel.
Many proposals from council members seek spending on alternatives to traditional policing; the money often would come from a $19 million pool of public safety funding from the state. Frey unsuccessfully sought to use up to $15 million of that money to recruit and retain police officers; a divided council rejected that, dealing a setback to the mayor, Police Chief Brian O’Hara and the police union that also had the effect of freeing up a hefty chunk of outside dollars not otherwise spoken for.
The council, in two votes on Thursday, agreed on two ways to spend some of the state money. They are:
3rd Precinct ‘interim safety center’
Council members unanimously approved spending $500,000 of the funding for the rental, design, build and communication of an interim Safety Center in the Third Precinct. Council Member Jason Chavez said he has already toured two potential locations along Lake Street.
He said the facility would not replace or conflict with an envisioned — but as-yet-undefined — safety center to be opened at the new Third Precinct police station at 2633 Minnehaha Av. that the council approved a month ago. Frey cited the potential redundancy in his opposition to the idea.
The functions of the interim center weren’t immediately clear. Chavez said residents could file police reports or return lost or stolen items there. But the wider intent was to supplement the city’s efforts to determine what a safety center should entail, given expectations that a network of them could offer services not available at police stations.
Council President Andrea Jenkins and others referred to the facility as similar to a “police substation,” such as the one that once was in the area. But City Attorney Kristyn Anderson cautioned that the state money proposed to fund the interim center cannot be used for a police station.
In a related proposal, also approved unanimously, council members agreed to set aside $4 million to explore pilot community safety centers across the city.
Frey’s administration opposed this spending as well, arguing in a memo sent to council members this week that it “will likely not be able to be spent down for many years and overlaps with various other programs and initiatives already accounted for in the proposed budget.”
Safety ambassadors
In another unanimous vote, council members approved spending $2.1 million in state funding to start neighborhood safety programs using unarmed “safety ambassadors” in the city’s seven cultural districts along West Broadway, Central Avenue, Cedar Avenue South, Franklin Avenue East, East Lake Street, 38th Street and Lowry Avenue North.
Public Safety Commissioner Todd Barnette cautioned council members that, while he supported the program, he was skeptical it could begin in the next year even with the additional funds.
Amid the cacophony and chaos of the pregame preparation before a recent Minnetonka High School football game, an exceptional group of six girls is gathered together among the school’s deep and talented cheerleading and dance teams.
The cheerleaders, a national championship-winning program of 40 girls, dot the track around the football field. As the clock ticks down to kickoff and their night of choreographed routines begins, the six girls, proudly wearing Minnetonka blue T-shirts emblazoned with “Skippers Nation” and shaking shiny pom-poms, swirl around the track, bristling with excited energy.
Their circumstances are no different from any of the other cheerleaders with one notable exception: The girls on this team have special needs.
They’re members of the Minnetonka Sparklers, a squad of cheerleaders made up solely of girls with special needs.
A football game at Minnetonka High School is an elaborate production. The Skippers’ recent homecoming victory over Shakopee brought an announced crowd of 8,145. And that is just paying attendees; it doesn’t include school staffers, coaches, dance team, marching band, concession workers, media members and others going about their business attached to the game.
The Sparklers program, now in its 12th season, was the brainchild of Marcy Adams, a former Minnetonka cheerleader who initiated the program in her senior year of high school. Adams has been coach of the team since its inception, staying on through her tenure as a cheerleader at the University of Minnesota.
She started the program after experiencing the Unified Sports program at Minnetonka. The unified sports movement at high schools brings together student-athletes with cognitive or physical disabilities and athletes with no disabilities to foster relationships, understanding and compassion through athletics. Many Minnesota schools offer unified sports.
“I grew up in a household that valued students with special needs and valued inclusion,” Adams said. “I saw a need to give to those students. At Minnetonka, we have a strong Unified program, and this was a great opportunity to build relationships and offer mentorship opportunities.”
Elite runners are in a league of their own.
To get a sense of how far ahead elite runners are compared to the rest of us, the Minnesota Star Tribune took a look at how their times compare to the average marathon participant.
The 2022 Twin Cities Marathon men’s winner was Japanese competitor Yuya Yoshida, who ran the marathon in a time of 2 hours, 11 minutes and 28 seconds, for an average speed of 11.96 mph. He averaged 5 minutes and 2 seconds per mile.
That’s more than twice the speed of the average competitor across both the men’s and women’s categories, of 5.89 mph, according to race results site Mtec. The average participant finished in 4 hours, 26 minutes and 56 seconds. That comes out to an average time of 10 minutes and 11 seconds per mile.
And taking it to the most extreme, the fastest-ever marathon runner, Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, finished the 2023 Chicago Marathon in 2 hours and 35 seconds, for an average pace of about 13 mph. Kiptum averaged 4 minutes and 36 seconds per mile.
Here is a graphic showing these differences in average marathon speed.
The school said in its lawsuit that both Hugo and May Township consider the land rural residential zoning, and that the codes identify a school as a conditional use. Hugo officials have generally supported the LCA plan, granting a building permit in 2022 that allowed LCA to invest $2.1 million into the former Withrow school for renovations.
The school said in its lawsuit that the existing septic system is failing and needs to be replaced, regardless of expansion plans.
The school said it notified neighbors of the property in 2022 and again in 2023 about its land purchase. About 50 residents in total attended those meetings, and just two expressed concerns over the issues of traffic and lights, according to the suit. The school met with the May Township board in May of 2023, and minutes from that meeting show that the board had no concerns beyond lighting at the time, according to the suit. The board asked if the school could use “down lighting” for its athletic fields and the school said it would.
In June, Hugo City Council approved a conditional use permit for the school, but the May Township board voted to extend the decision deadline to early August.
The suit says it was at a subsequent meeting in July that May Town Board Chairman John Pazlar objected to the plan for the first time, saying “the main concern, based on public comment, is to keep Town of May rural.”
The school said its plans for the May Township portion of its property had been submitted eight months prior to the July meeting, and that its plans met requirements of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.
Helene disrupts yellow jacket, bee nests in North Carolina, prompting massive Benadryl, EpiPen requests
Hospitals across the U.S. face IV fluid shortage after Hurricane Helene
Hospitals across the U.S. face IV fluid shortage after Hurricane Helene
Helene disrupts yellow jacket, bee nests in North Carolina, prompting massive Benadryl, EpiPen requests
Hospitals across the U.S. face IV fluid shortage after Hurricane Helene