Star Tribune
It could cost Burnsville $300K to let citizens spend $100K, and some council members are concerned
It turns out that letting residents weigh in on how Burnsville should spend money could be more expensive than the city bargained for.
An experiment in letting residents direct where some tax dollars will go could cost two to three times more to administer than the $100,000 it would let residents spend, Burnsville staff revealed at a work session last week. Still, the city’s “participatory budgeting” project – an innovative idea tried mostly in larger U.S. cities like Boston and Oakland, Calif. – will continue, with staff sharing more specifics in September.
The council decided to pursue the project last September. Last week, most council members supported allocating $100,000 toward neighborhood grants of up to $10,000 each.
“I absolutely know [residents] have ideas we’ve never even thought of, never even considered,” said Cara Schulz, the council member who first championed the idea. “We just have to give our residents the opportunity … to have some control of their destiny.”
City staff estimated administering the pilot will take 2,500 to 3,500 staff hours – the equivalent of $170,000 to $240,000 the first year – at a time when the city’s staff is already stretched thin and there’s no budget for hiring. Other costs, including promoting it, would add $30,000 to $50,000, said Bethany Brewer, Burnsville’s strategic initiatives director.
Council member Dan Kealey emphasized that costs associated with staff hours didn’t require new money but would use existing, salaried staff.
“Up to half a million dollars a year to do this thing?” said City Council member Dan Gustafson. “We have existing programs in place already to get into our neighborhoods already without having to put together a new program.”
Gustafson said he’s now a “no” vote on the pilot; City Council member Vince Workman said though he’s not opposed to it, he’s also worried that costs are “creeping up.”
But Schulz said in an interview she believes the program will be significantly smaller than what was presented at the work session and require a fraction of the staff time discussed.
Staff had posed five questions to the council, including how to determine neighborhood boundaries and who will provide guidance to the staff making it happen.
Most council members agreed that while some neighborhoods were obvious because they are governed by homeowners’ associations, residents should get to define neighborhood boundaries themselves and estimated there could be 70 or more.
Several council members leaned toward using money gained from selling city property or applying for outside money to fund the grants, rather than relying on funds from the city’s Economic Development Authority (EDA). EDA money can only be for physical improvements, staff said.
Schulz suggested seeking out grants from nonprofits: “Since this is something that is more groundbreaking, the chance of grant award is actually higher,” she said.
Participatory budgeting has also been tried in smaller or more informal ways in Minnesota cities including Minneapolis, Duluth and Bloomington.
With the support of several local businesspeople, Selvaggio started Advocate Services, Inc. to lobby for civil rights and equal housing and protest the Vietnam War. About 100 people sent Selvaggio $2 to $25 a month to cover his work and living expenses.
After a speech in 1971 at St. Joan of Arc Church in Minneapolis, he met Ted Pouliot, who operated an artificial flower and interior design business. They developed the idea of rehabbing deteriorating homes in the inner city, which evolved into PPL.
Two years after Selvaggio divorced Yeager, he married Rosario Escanan, a Filipino human rights activist who he helped immigrate to the U.S. at a time when the Philippines was under martial law. “Two of my friends disappeared and I assumed they were killed,” said Escanan.
Selvaggio founded the One Percent Club to recruit wealthy Minnesotans to pledge 1% of their annual income to charities of their choice. He helped Steve Rothschild start Twin Cities R!SE, an antipoverty program, in 1993, and he started MicroGrants, a nonprofit that makes small grants to low-income “people of potential,” in 2008.
Rothschild, a retired General Mills executive vice president, said Selvaggio “saw needs that weren’t being addressed and he did something about it.”
Selvaggio suffered from several age-related ailments and had recently decided to stop eating, drinking and taking medications “in an effort to go out on his own terms,” said his son, Sam, of Minneapolis.
Eight members of law enforcement fired their weapons at Kasey Paul Willander, 27, during a 15-hour standoff in rural western Minnesota, state authorities said Thursday.
The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension identified Willander as the man shot by deputies and police during a siege that began Saturday near Clarkfield, Minn., 15 miles south of Montevideo.
The bureau also named the men who shot at Willander, and will review body camera footage as part of an investigation into the use of force by law enforcement, the statement said.
Willander is hospitalized in stable condition at HCMC and is expected to survive, the statement said. No one else was injured during the incident.
He left before deputies arrived, but law enforcement said it received a call two hours later that he was hiding in the woods with a rifle near another relative’s home. These relatives were forced to barricade themselves in their home. As deputies evacuated them, Willander pointed a long gun in their direction, the warrant said. He is prohibited from possessing firearms after pleading guilty to third-degree criminal sexual conduct, a felony, in 2015.
A standoff ensued as police SWAT teams surrounded the home, the Yellow Medicine County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday. Willander is accused of shooting at the officers multiple times, and SWAT team members struck him at least twice before the standoff ended at 6:17 a.m. on Sunday.
Two deputies are said to have discharged their firearms and are on critical incident leave — a standard practice for officers involved in BCA use-of-force investigations.
Star Tribune
Before Peggy Flanagan, there was Marlene M. Johnson, whose memoir is about being lieutenant governor
Since this is an election cycle of firsts — first Black woman to head a major party ticket, first time a Minnesota governor is on the ballot as a veep candidate (Humphrey and Mondale were U.S. Senators) — I looked forward to reading about another: Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor.
Marlene M. Johnson, 78, served as DFL Gov. Rudy Perpich’s second-in-command for two terms, from 1983-91. Her book, “Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love,” starts with her political career, then pivots to her role as a caregiver after her husband suffered a traumatic brain injury.
First the politics, starting with a Minnesota history refresher: the late Perpich, an Iron Range DFLer opposed to abortion rights, was elected lieutenant governor in 1970, re-elected four years later on a ticket with Wendell Anderson. When Walter Mondale became V.P., Anderson was appointed to the Senate and Perpich became governor. He served one term, lost the next, then challenged the party’s endorsed candidate to win again. That detail is significant since it may have hindered Johnson’s ability to run for other offices later — some DFLers didn’t forget that her ticket bucked the party.
When Perpich picked Johnson as his running mate, she said there was evidence that “the political establishment was not ready for a female lieutenant governor candidate.” Yet the ticket prevailed, and Perpich tasked her with leading the governor’s appointments, aiming to bring in more women and people of color, and expanding tourism.
Political junkies will be interested in that section of the book, including the prominent people she mentions. Johnson met Mondale as a high school student, helped longtime legislator Linda Berglin win her first race and met a young Joe Biden while campaigning for a congressional candidate in 1976.
Johnson was single when she was first elected, a workaholic who surrounded herself with friends and family for support. In her first year in office, she met a Swedish businessman, Peter Frankel, during a meeting about creating a “sister state relationship” between Minnesota and Sweden’s Kronoberg County. The two began a long-distance relationship that turned into a transatlantic marriage, even after she left public office and moved to D.C. to run a nonprofit for international educators.
The logistics of making that work, with two homes in two countries, is fascinating. Then in 2010, Peter fell down the stairs, and the last third of the book focuses on his convalescence in Sweden. Also interesting — but maybe less so for readers who pick up the book expecting a political memoir.
Rise to the Challenge (U of Minn Press)
The book is organized thematically, not chronologically, so the narrative jumps around and there’s repetition in some chapters. And Johnson’s writing is a bit dry — she said she journaled her whole life and parts of it read that way, listing who came to visit and places they traveled.
