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.
A leader in the Feeding Our Future scheme pleaded guilty Thursday to wire fraud and admitted to receiving $11.4 million that he claimed was going to meals for low-income children during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Haji Osman Salad, 34, appeared Thursday in U.S. District Court in Minneapolis to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud. His other charges, related to wire fraud and money laundering, will be dismissed as part of the plea agreement.
In 2020, Salad started Haji’s Kitchen, a Brooklyn Park-based company that claimed to serve 15.7 million free meals to low-income children between June 2020 and March 2022. The company received millions in federal funding intended to reimburse them for meals. But only a “minimal portion” of the meals they reported were actually served, according to the charges. Millions of dollars instead went to personal uses, such as properties and vehicles, U.S. Assistant Attorney Matthew Ebert said at the hearing.
As part of the agreement, Salad is required to pay back the $11.4 million he received in restitution. He also agreed to forfeit the properties and vehicles he bought with fraud money. His plea came a day after co-defendant Sharmarke Issa, 42, also changed his plea to guilty on one count of wire fraud.
Salad admitted to taking at least $2 million in federal funds for himself to purchase properties, and $400,000 for vehicles. The vehicles included Mercedes and Land Rover SUVs, according to charges.
The defendant admitted to creating shell companies, such as US Halal Foods LLC, that were not actually involved in the food business and were used to launder money as part of the scheme.
In all, Salad was responsible for $19 million in lost funding from the Federal Child Nutrition Program, Ebert said in court.
Salad is the 20th person to plead guilty in the Feeding Our Future federal fraud case, out of the 70 defendants charged in Minnesota so far. Prosecutors have called it one of the largest pandemic-era fraud cases in the United States. The defendants are charged with stealing more than $250 million from federal food programs that reimbursed nonprofits, schools and day cares for feeding low-income children.
Following the group’s announcement, the Harris-Walz campaign said the governor met with families of American hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas during his visit to Washington, D.C. Thursday. During their meeting, he assured them that he and Harris would try to get them released while reaffirming their commitment to Israel’s security.
Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has worked closely with the Uncommitted Movement said Thursday she hopes the Harris-Walz campaign will continue to have a dialogue with them.
“My hope still remains that Harris and Walz would take this offer, to win their their votes,” she said in an interview on Capitol Hill.
Omar also said she plans to continue to support the Harris-Walz ticket regardless of the group’s decision.
A Harris-Walz campaign spokesperson said the vice president remains committed to ending the war in Gaza.
“She will continue working to bring the war in Gaza to an end in a way where Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” a campaign spokesperson said in a statement.
Star Tribune
Nine Stillwater prison staffers treated after exposure to synthetic drug used by inmates
Nine staff members at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater were treated at a hospital and released Thursday after being exposed to a synthetic drug, according to the state Department of Corrections.
The staffers reported feeling lightheaded and nauseous with increased heart rates, the department said in a news release. Eight staff members were taken to Lakeview Hospital in Stillwater by paramedics, and one was administered Narcan.
The incident began at about 7:45 a.m., when a staffer responded to a report of an inmate smoking an unknown substance in his cell and soon began to feel ill. A short time later, three other staffers who had responded to the inmate began feeling sick, and two of them went to the hospital.
In a separate incident in the same housing unit, another inmate man threw a container with an unknown substance that landed near three staffers, who then began feeling ill and were taken to the hospital.
Investigators have not yet identified the substance, the department said.
The inmate caught smoking in his cell told investigators that it was a stronger than expected dose of synthetic marijuana. Officials said that another form of synthetic cannabinoids already had a presence in the facility because it can be purchased online and reach the facility’s population through mail.
“These synthetic substances are particularly dangerous because the chemical properties that comprise them are unknown and uncontrolled,” said Minnesota Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell in a statement. “We are prioritizing our investigative efforts to identify and prosecute those responsible for conspiring to introduce these substances into the secure correctional environment. For the safety of our staff, we are reviewing and updating our emergency response protocols to suspected drug use incidents.”
