Star Tribune
Former MnDOT official Timothy Sexton approved as Minneapolis public works director
The Minneapolis City Council on Thursday approved a longtime transportation official to be the city’s new public works director.
Timothy Sexton, who previously served as an assistant commissioner with the Minnesota Department of Public Transportation, was nominated by Mayor Jacob Frey last month. On Thursday, the council unanimously ratified the nomination.
Sexton replaces MnDOT Commissioner Margaret Anderson Kelliher, who was ratified as city operations officer in December.
Sexton most recently served as the assistant commissioner for sustainability, planning and program management for MnDOT, overseeing a staff of 350. He worked at the agency since 2014. Before that, he worked for the Washington State Department of Transportation since 2006, and prior to that, he designed and constructed green roofing projects in Germany.
The city’s public works department spends some $440 million annually and has more than 1,100 employees whose duties include street repair, plowing, garbage and recycling collection, water and emergency sewer repairs.
DULUTH — Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott has given an unexpected and no-strings-attached $9 million to a Duluth nonprofit that helps entrepreneurs grow.
The EFund was chosen through Yield Giving’s “quiet research” process, in which it chooses and evaluates organizations privately for unsolicited gifts. EFund is only the second known northeast Minnesota organization to benefit from the billions Scott, an author and the ex-wife of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, has given since 2020 as part of her pledge to donate a majority of her wealth over her lifetime. The Duluth Area YMCA in 2020 received an undisclosed amount. About $140 million in donations have now been designated to Minnesota organizations.
“It still feels surreal,” EFund CEO Shawn Wellnitz said. “And with no restrictions, it’s just transformational,” especially as pandemic aid dries up for businesses and creditors are more cautious about lending money.
Unrestricted gifts are considered rare in the philanthropy world.
The EFund nonprofit, formed in 1989, manages a portfolio of about $60 million, lending money and offering services to entrepreneurs in northeast and east-central Minnesota, and northern Wisconsin. The Seattle billionaire’s gift is its largest ever. The recognition and confidence that comes with a Scott donation can help the organization leverage that money “multiple times over,” Wellnitz said.
The nonprofit works with about 1,500 entrepreneurs each year. Wellnitz said the money will allow the organization to take bigger risks with companies they are already helping who are poised to bring more jobs to the region, along with preparing succession plans for the looming mass retirements of area aging business owners.
It has lent start-up money several times to Advanced Machine Guarding Solutions, a safety equipment supplier in Hibbing. The EFund helped the owner, who came from the robotics industry, line up other funding sources. The company now has more than a dozen employees and “back orders through the roof,” Wellnitz said.
Yield Giving didn’t share with the EFund why it chose the nonprofit. Its website says it looks at organizations in underserved communities that have high potential for impact, and with stable finances, a long track record and evidence of outcomes.
Star Tribune
A second person has been charged in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced dozens of women and children to relocate last week.
A second person has been charged in connection with an attack on a north Minneapolis homeless shelter that forced dozens of women and children to relocate last week.
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Robbinsdale is considering renaming a beloved park named after a family that tainted the city with racial covenants.
The city council will hold a public hearing to potentially rename Sanborn Park Tuesday evening.
The park was named after the Sanborn family, which owned much of the land throughout Robbinsdale in the early 1900s. They placed racial covenants on their real estate, prohibiting “any person or persons of Chinese, Japanese, Moorish, Turkish, Negro, Mongolian or African blood or descent” from leasing or mortgaging their properties, according to Mapping Prejudice, a University of Minnesota database of racial covenants in the Twin Cities metro.
Racial covenants were used to segregate the metro during the early to mid 1900s, the effects of which are still present. In 1948, the U.S. Supreme Court declared racial covenants unconstitutional, and Minnesota outlawed them in 1953. Thus, the covenants hold no legal power but remain on deeds to scattered properties around the Twin Cities.
The Robbinsdale City Council, with the assistance of the city’s Human Rights Commission, established naming and renaming policy for parks and facilities in the spring that places emphasis on names with “equity/inclusiveness, service to the community, and/or observe local history.”
The council will hear public comments on two Sanborn Park name change proposals Tuesday.
The Human Rights Commission is proposing the name Castile Park, in honor of Philando Castile, a Black man killed by police during a traffic stop in Falcon Heights in 2016.
Some Robbinsdale residents said they did not want the park to be renamed after Castile.
