Star Tribune
St. Paul mayor and city council meeting to reach budget compromise
The middle ground: a 7.2% increase.
In an interview Wednesday afternoon, Deputy Mayor Jamie Tincher said Carter, too, would like the levy to be lower. But proposing a 5% increase would mean an additional cut of $6 million from 2025 city services — a reduction that could increase fire response times, slow the processing of license applications and reduce parks and rec and library services.
“He doesn’t have a path to do that without reducing services that will be felt by the people who are currently getting them,” Tincher said.
If the two sides cannot agree on a tax levy for 2025, state law would require the city to institute this year’s levy. That, Tincher said, would lead to drastic cuts in city personnel and services, as costs go up every year because of things like health care, insurance and previously negotiated salary increases.
The gap between revenue and costs then, she said, would be $16 million.
Tincher was asked if this year’s negotiations felt “different.”
Star Tribune
UCare closing offices amid insurer scorn after killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO
Thompson’s fatal shooting “has created a new level of unease in our industry,” the Minnesota Council of Health Plans told the Minnesota Star Tribune in a statement. “The vitriol on social media following this tragic event is unsettling and concerning.”
“Thousands of people work for health plans here in the Twin Cities and across the state,” said the trade group, which is not an insurer but an association of health plans founded 40 years ago. “Not only are these Minnesotans dedicated and invested in supporting access to care, but they also receive their care here, they raise families here and they support their communities.”
Medica employs about 3,000 people, mostly in Minnesota.
UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest health insurer and a division of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group, which said Friday it was partnering with law enforcement to ensure workplace safety while reinforcing security guidelines and building access policies. United employs about 19,000 people in Minnesota.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota said in a Friday statement it had elevated security measures and protocols at its headquarters in Eagan, while asking workers to “remain aware and vigilant and report any unusual activity.”
Star Tribune
Passive home project in north Minneapolis boosts affordable houses
Passive house principles can help residents save $200 to $300 on energy bills every month compared to an average home, Lassiter said. In the summer, the solar panels will likely generate more power than the home uses, giving future residents potential earnings on their energy bill.
Urban Homeworks focused on remodeling projects until about 2017, said Anne Ketz, the nonprofit’s real estate development director. After the economic crash and mortgage crisis in the late 2000s, the group could buy homes in north Minneapolis for $1, she said. But when the housing market rebounded, the group began focusing on new construction.
Urban Homeworks always tried to incorporate energy efficiency into its projects, including working with the University of Minnesota to construct net-zero homes, which use solar energy but have less stringent energy-efficiency standards than passive homes.
In 2021, Minneapolis solicited bids for the passive home project. Urban Homeworks jumped at the opportunity. Passive homes cost about 20% more to build than standard new housing, Ketz said, so city funding provided a chance for the organization to try it.
The nonprofit sells directly to buyers, and markets its homes towards residents of color who live in north Minneapolis. But the homes are available to anyone meeting income criteria. The first five passive homes are eligible to buyers who earn up to 80% of the area median income; that’s $97,800 for a family of four in Hennepin County.
Four of the five homes are being sold in coordination with the City of Lakes Community Land Trust, which allows families to build equity in homes while controlling the underlying plot to keep the property affordable in perpetuity.
Star Tribune
Detectives scour thousands of hours of video for clues in slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in NYC
Cameras do not yield secrets on their own. In the headquarters of the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative, the midtown precincts that cover the area around the shooting and the offices of the Major Case squad, video recovery teams are scraping countless hours of footage. They are constructing a visual narrative one time-stamped snippet at a time, like old-time animators making a cartoon.
“You might have to look through 100 hours of video to get two minutes that’s usable,” Carlos Nieves, the Police Department’s assistant commissioner of public information, said at a news conference Friday night. The department’s chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, added that there were hundreds of detectives working on every aspect of the case, including the videos.
The 60,000-camera network includes some installed across the city by police and by the Department of Transportation, along with thousands that belong to private entities — big banks, hotel chains, schools and real estate companies.
Any can be accessed remotely through the Police Department’s Domain Awareness System, created in part by the new commissioner, Jessica Tisch. The system coordinates data from many surveillance tools, including license plate readers and phone call histories, to help identify people.
When someone on a video recovery team gets a hit, they scroll back and forth through time and space, toggling to neighboring cameras as they try to keep the target in their sights.
And when the teams remotely viewing the cameras lose track of the person, the boots-on-the-ground work begins.