Star Tribune
Minneapolis ballot initiative/referendum idea floated for 2024 election
Should Minneapolis voters be allowed to simply vote to change the city’s laws?
Council Member Robin Wonsley thinks so, and there appears to be enough support on the City Council to move the idea toward a public hearing in mid-March — and a potential ballot question for voters in November.
Here’s a primer.
What’s the idea?
Wonsley wants voters to amend the city charter to allow residents to vote directly to enact new city ordinances and repeal existing ones. Such a process is often called citizen initiative, ballot initiatives or popular referendum.
Currently, voters can force the council to consider an issue via a ballot question, but only the council can actually make law. This is what happened with Minneapolis’ rent control question in 2021. Voters approved a question saying the council should take the idea on, but the council has yet to pass anything — to the frustration of supporters like Wonsley.
Why?
It’s a “power to the people” argument, a form of direct democracy currently favored by many on the left end of the political spectrum in major American cities.
“Ballot initiatives give residents another option when they are faced with bureaucratic stalling tactics, vetoes, and other barriers,” Wonsley wrote in a newsletter to constituents, describing the process as “a check and balance on City Hall.”
Who else does this?
Remember rent control? While Minneapolis voters told the council to deliberate on the issue, St. Paul voters simply made it happen. That same night, St. Paul voters enacted a rent control policy by approving a more specific — and powerful — question on their ballots.
That’s because St. Paul’s charter allows for ballot initiatives and referendums. In fact, so do a number of other Minnesota cities, including Duluth, Bloomington and Brooklyn Park, according to a City Council staff analysis. Other cities, including Rochester, for example, operate like Minneapolis.
How would it work?
Wonsley hasn’t produced specifics yet. In most referendum communities, a threshold of voter signatures is needed to get a question on the ballot. Sometimes, the City Council or mayor need to sign off.
Is there opposition?
There has yet to be a full-fledged discussion on the idea, but Council Member Linea Palmisano recently expressed initial reservations, arguing that citizen initiatives actually weaken the council by bypassing it, and that, she said, actually weakens the council’s ability to check the power of the mayor.
What’s next?
Specific wording for Wonsley’s proposal will be completed in a few weeks, and the City Council is eyeing a mid-March public hearing. (The council recently voted to hold a March 4 hearing, but that date appeared likely to be postponed for procedural reasons.)
If the council approves the idea, it could be subject to a veto by Mayor Jacob Frey, who hasn’t publicly weighed in. The council could override his veto.
If it survives, it would go to the Charter Commission, whose support is needed to place the question to voters in this fall’s general election.
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
