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Dear Neighbor,
So many residents have been
reaching out about the 2040 Comprehensive Plan Draft. I
appreciate your engagement in this process. As you likely know, this is
an important step in creating high-level guidance as to how growth in our city
will be evaluated as new projects come forward. Our city is growing- and
is projected to continue to grow- and this document should guide how the
changes coming at us can be accommodated to help be a healthy, sustainable, and
thriving place to live.
The proposed changes are not meant
to be immediate but generational. How do we involve you best in the
conversation? I’ve been confronting my own biases as I work my way through the
document and have been listening deeply to feedback. How do we open ourselves
up to generational change in an intentional way? There are pieces of this plan
that I struggle with greatly. There are solutions here that I don’t think
will move the needle on housing affordability in our city, and things that I
don’t think will help us toward the plan's goals we originally set forth to achieve. I think we have the goals right.
But, I’m less certain and am working to scrutinize the challenging task that
our Long Range Planning department drafted in putting those goals into a
plan.
Where will all the feedback go? I
am listening to it, and it will shape my views and how I work to improve the
document before adoption. But, what I think will be even more impactful
are the ways that every individual of our city can give direct input to the
document, and every month our Long Range Planners will be updating it with
changes that reflect public comment. I will be watching to see what
changes are incorporated or will be looking for support to add them in to the
process in the fall.
How to best give input? There’s
many different ways. There’s online feedback across the Plan’s website
(see the green dialogue boxes throughout the website), sending an email to my office (or call), sending an email directly to the plan authors at 2040@minneapolismn.gov, or by attending one of the open houses. Because we knew
there would be a lot of people looking to attend from Southwest Minneapolis, we
also made sure to add one within our ward to make it easy and more tailored to
what neighbors here in Southwest want to spend time on. For that reason I
developed the survey you will see later in this newsletter, to tell us how you
want us to spend that time next week.
Some people find an online dynamic
document with a way to provide feedback to be the best thing ever- others (me
included!) sometimes find it frustrating and want to “print it out” so we can
read it start to finish. So I will keep working on that, and continuing to
engage you at all kinds of our established neighborhood events around the ward.
I have lots of opinions and
thoughts on the plan draft. But I also think that the best way I can lead
and represent you right now is to not take any hard lines or official positions
yet on this draft, until later in the process. I know I will have many hundred
more conversations with you all before I do.
Yours in service,
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