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Dear Community,
Starting next week, we’ve got some exciting staffing changes in the Ward 2 office. Policy aide Qannani Omar will be out for the summer as she welcomes a new baby to her family. We are excited to welcome back our former intern Shanal Khawaja as her temporary replacement. As always, you can reach out to our entire team at ward2@minneapolismn.gov with any questions, concerns, ideas, or service requests.
Sincerely
Council Member Robin Wonsley
The city hosted its first public hearing on the draft Climate Equity Plan. Thank you to the dozens of residents who came to testify and submitted written comments.
Environmental justice is a top priority for residents. People want the city to support projects that deeply invest in our youth and a new green economy, and to do so with the urgency that climate change requires.
While the vision laid out in the draft Climate Equity Plan is great, I have a number of serious concerns that align with the majority of the testimony that residents gave.
Metrics and accountability
The Climate Action Plan has minimal timelines included in the bulk of its strategy proposals. This is of alignment from other recently passed city plans like the Transportation Action Plan (TAP) and the Racial Equity Transit Framework (REF). With those plans, each strategy and action step had a clear timeline linked to implementation.
Currently, the plan does not include an ownership/implementation section so we can be aware of who is charged with completing each action. Boston’s Climate Action Plan and the Minneapolis Strategic Racial Equity Plan have clear and transparent ownership and accountability of the work. The Minneapolis Climate Equity Plan needs the same.
Racial Equity & Community Engagement
The Racial Equity Analysis of the Climate Equity Plan is not consistent with the priorities I am hearing from residents on the North and South side. My office has met with residents from diverse neighborhoods within the Green Zones who have clear visions of how the city can support the reparative harm that was created due to poor city planning and historic disinvestment. The asks and ideas they have championed are not clearly prioritized in this current draft.
There is also no mention of how labor or workers will be integrated into this plan, which is greatly concerning since workforce development will be key in building an equitable and effective green economy.
Funding
The plan includes essentially no information about how to pay for what is likely to be a multi-billion dollar set of programs and initiatives. A vision is unfortunately meaningless if it is not funded. We need to allocate dollars to support these programs and we need to do so in an equitable, progressive way, instead of through regressive models. Even if it's not fully understood how we will pay for these strategies, it's concerning that the plan isn’t even fully transparent about the costs. As the purse holders for the city, the council needs a fiscal understanding of what it will take for the City to fully invest in this plan. There are general references to a funding source called the Climate Legacy Initiative, but city staff provide very little information on what that is, how it works, and how much funding it needs.
I will be meeting with staff from the Sustainability Department to gather clarity to these concerns and offer additional feedback that my office has gathered from the public, with the goal of strengthening it as much as possible before Council takes final action on it.
Key votes: The Climate Equity Plan will come back to the PHS committee on July 12th for a vote on whether it should be recommended to the full council.
Council was asked to approve a change to how representatives are elected to the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) policy board. There was some confusion about the impacts of this change. My office worked with NCR and the Public Health & Safety Chair, Council Member Vetaw to have the item be referred back to staff for clarification and more information.
Key votes: Referred to staff, no specific return date.
Council received a report on the legislative directive that Council Member Chughtai and I co-authored about implementing a municipal sidewalk plowing program. This was a thorough report, but I would like to highlight a couple of points that I believe are critical as the council considers next steps for 2024. The staff report emphasized the extremely high cost of a program, but all the cost projections were for deploying staff to respond to 50 snow events per year, which is far higher than the number of significant snowfalls we have seen in the last three years. This was a high-level analysis that was unable to provide specific policy recommendations at this point, but there was acknowledgement that the city could do more within its regulatory powers to hold large landlords more accountable for unsafe unshoveled sidewalks. My office has been contacted by residents who have shared their frustrations with the corporate out of state landlords that dominate several blocks in the Como neighborhood. Unsafe conditions on a sidewalk should be taken as seriously as unsafe conditions inside the home. The current system of fines has not been a deterrent and I plan to work with staff to see what options may be available to tie sidewalk shoveling violations to rental licensing. I will be following up with Public Works to obtain cost projections for other scenarios, which the report alluded to but did not contain as well as policy changes council can make to strengthen code enforcement.
I want to thank Council Member Chughtai for grounding our discussion in the reality that snowy and icy sidewalks are a real safety and accessibility problem that harm working class people. It takes resources to invest in the public services that address these urgent needs. The current system is clearly not working, and I am going to keep working on building out a city-led program to ensure safe and accessible sidewalks for all residents all year round.
You can read the report and watch the presentation and discussion here.
Key votes: No votes at this time.
I am working on an ordinance to ensure fair wages and working conditions for rideshare drivers. This work is especially important for the city to lead following Governor Walz’s veto of the rideshare protection bill after pressure from Uber.
This week we received a recommendation on what minimum compensation rates would be required in order to ensure that drivers are earning at least minimum wage after expenses.
You can watch the rate study presentation here starting at 01:06:00.
Key votes: No vote taken on the recommended rates. Policy development continues towards a vote on a full policy.
Council received a presentation on the budget requests from the legislative department. Under the new government structure, the legislative department includes researchers, analysts, and auditors who report to the City Council, while all the city’s operating departments report to the Mayor. I have been very vocal about the need for a fully funded legislative department for the entire government restructure process, starting early last year. At that time I was told that we needed to prioritize building out the executive side, which we did, adding a layer of management positions that were supposed to clarify and streamline accountability and responsibility. Since that time, I have continued to advocate for the need for a legislative department because my office has experienced the very serious challenges that come from not having one.
When Council passes legislative directives, which are requests for information that allow council to fulfill our duties, they go to the executive side without any standardized coordination or reporting back to the legislative side. Since the formalizing of legislative directives back in December, directives have been returned incomplete, have been returned late, and in some cases not been returned at all. There have been miscommunications, moving goal posts, and unstandardized rules about who gets access to what information when. My office has at times been unable to get extremely basic information that we need such as information about the costs and outcomes of our city operations. We could have avoided some of these challenges by fully funding a legislative department last year when we built the executive side, but I’m very glad it’s happening now.
My office worked with the Budget Chair, Council Member Koski, to bring forward a motion that will ensure baseline funding for the new legislative department for 2024. The motion passed unanimously and puts Council on the path of gaining independent nonpartisan staff who can make sure that our work in policymaking, oversight, and budget are being driven by resident priorities, rather than by the interest of the executive branch. That is crucial to a functioning democracy and it will outlast any of us here.
That said, this is just the beginning of our legislative department. We need to continue to expand this department and invest in the staff and operations required to support it.
Key votes: Motion supporting full funding of the legislative department passed committee unanimously, goes to Council for approval on June 15th.
I and Council Member Johnson have worked with community groups including the Minnesota Nurses Association, SEIU Healthcare, Students United for a National Health Plan, and the Minnesota Farmers Union on a resolution opposing the proposed merger of Sanford Health and M Health Fairview. There is reason to believe that the merger would not improve patient outcomes or healthcare access, could increase costs of healthcare, could worsen conditions for healthcare workers, and could negatively impact the U of M’s flagship research and training hospitals.
Key votes: Resolution will be discussed and voted on at the Intergovernmental Relations Committee on June 13th at 10am. If passed, it will advance for a full Council vote at City Council on June 15th at 9:30am.
The Public Health and Safety Committee heard the first part of a presentation on the city’s opioid response. You can watch the presentation here starting at 1:42:00. Due to time restraints, I made the motion to postpone the item to the next PHS meeting, so that committee members and the public could receive the full presentation and engage in a longer discussion.
Key votes: Presentation and discussion at the Public Health and Safety Committee on June 21st at 1:30. No anticipated votes.
I was honored to attend the Rise and Remember Festival and George Floyd Global Memorial Gala last weekend. The events focused on healing, empowerment, collective liberation and community power. Thank you to all who contributed to organizing these incredibly important and meaningful events.
I had the honor of speaking alongside healthcare workers at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) who are leaders in their union, AFSCME 2474, about the relationship between civil rights and labor. Workers are organizing to demand that HCMC recognize Juneteenth as a holiday, but so far HCMC has rejected these proposals. My office will continue supporting these workers in the efforts to advance racial justice and worker protections grounded in racial equity.
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The Pratt Elementary school playground has been renamed the Jackson Family Playground after the Jacksons, the first Black family in Prospect Park. Pratt hosted a renaming ceremony where current students spoke with some of the descendants of the Jacksons. It was a beautiful and meaningful event recognizing the racist history of our neighborhoods and the commitment to a different future. I encourage everyone to read the story of the Jacksons. Thank you to the Pratt Elementary School, Pratt PTA, and Prospect Park Association for your years of work on this project.
 
On Tuesday, June 13 from 4-5 pm Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity is hosting an open house of 3326 Emerson Ave N, a home built to net zero energy standards through Minneapolis Homes sustainability incentive, featuring an air source heat pump and solar panels. The 5 bedroom, 2 bath home will be sold to a household with an income below 60% AMI.
City of Lakes Community Land Trust is hosting a bus tour and a bike tour to celebrate completed perpetually affordable homeownership units financed through Minneapolis Homes Financing.
- Bus tour is Friday, June 2 from 9-11 am and features Harrison Townhomes (17 unit affordable to 41-60% AMI households), 628 E Franklin Condos (7 unit affordable to 41-60% AMI households), and 3715 4th Avenue South (discount sale to CLCLT completed rehab).
- The CLCLT Bike Tour is Saturday, June 10 from 4-7 pm and beginning and ending at the Powderhorn Park Community Building Parking Lot, 3400 15th Avenue South.
Email Council Member Wonsley and her staff at ward2@minneapolismn.gov
Or contact staff directly:
Policy Aide Celeste Robinson
Share your opinion or address an issue, use the Ward 2 contact form
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