A 7-0 St. Paul City Council vote on Jan. 22 made the capital city the last of Minnesota’s 25 largest municipalities to add administrative citations — non-criminal fines — to the city’s toolbelt for ordinance enforcement. 

Before the amendment, the city could either issue a warning and hope for compliance or take someone to court — there was no in between. Administrative citations serve as an enforcement middle ground, allowing the city to enforce a civil fine rather than seek a criminal charge. 

Administrative citations are not the most exciting conversation starter — for most people, at least. This is not the case for St. Paul City Council President Mitra Jalali, who has been working to achieve this charter amendment for over five years. 

“This is an example of a very unappealing issue that has a very important everyday impact,” said Jalali, who recently announced her resignation from the council, effective Feb. 5. 

Council members have attempted to make this amendment at least two times in the past. One of these times was in 2021, in the early years of Jalali’s tenure. The attempt to make this change to the charter in 2021 did not move forward because there was a single council member opposed to the idea, Jalali said. 

“I’m frankly relieved that our council was the one that accomplished this. I don’t think another council could have gotten it done,” Jalali said. 

In order to make a change to the St. Paul city charter, a unanimous vote is required. That’s partly why it has taken multiple attempts to make this change. 

How can administrative citations be used? 

One of the clearest examples of how administrative citations can be used to enforce current city policy is providing renter protections. 

“Administrative citations provide a tool to hold the biggest, most disconnected property owners and employers in our city accountable to the rules and laws of our city,” Jalali said. 

For example, a council-approved citation could be used to enforce the city’s “advanced notice of sales” policy. This policy required landlords to pay relocation assistance to  displaced renters in the event a rental property is sold.

Administrative citations can also be used to enforce policy around earned sick and safe time. If an employer isn’t granting this time, which they are required to do by law, the city can now implement a fine that does not rise to the level of criminal citation but goes beyond education or a warning. It could also be used to enforce the city’s conversion therapy ban, which Jalali said is imperative in keeping the city’s LGBTQ youth safe and healthy. 

These are only a few examples of how these citations can be used, Jalali noted. The goal is not to penalize individual residents of the city, but rather large corporate entities and large property owners who are out of compliance with city policy and ordinances, she said. 

Creating an equitable citations framework  

The addition of this tool to the city charter does not mean citations will be issued immediately. The council still has to approve cases in which these fines will be used. 

In addition to the charter change, the council passed a resolution to create a temporary advisory committee that will spend the next year designing an “equitable” framework for implementation and enforcement of citations.

The resolution to create the advisory committee was brought forward by council member Anika Bowie, who said in an email that, when misused, administrative citations can “function as a hidden tax” on low-income and Black communities. 

The committee will establish transparency measures, impact assessments and accountability mechanisms. The intent is not to have citations used as revenue for the city’s general operations, but rather for priorities like housing stability, tenant protections and public safety, Bowie said. 

Bowie is from the historic Rondo neighborhood and said she has seen how parking tickets and city fees can trap people in cycles of debt while those who ignore city policies face no real consequences. 

“Too often, enforcement in our city is either too weak to be effective or too harsh in ways that disproportionately impact Black and low-income communities,” she said.  

Why there’s opposition 

There is still a chance the amendment could be challenged and put to a vote in November. Former council candidate Peter Butler has said he is working on collecting 2,000 voter signatures to attempt to freeze the charter amendment and place the amendment on the ballot in November. Butler has 60 days to submit these signatures. 

Bowie said many concerns around the use of this kind of city ticketing are based on examples of misuse in other cities.

One of the most infamous cases of this is in Ferguson, Missouri. The city relies heavily on fines and fees to generate revenue. In 2015, a U.S. Department of Justice investigation revealed the city was bringing in over $2.6 million annually, accounting for nearly a quarter of its general fund budget. Black residents were disproportionately targeted, receiving 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests, despite making up only 67% of the population.

“That’s exactly what we must prevent in St. Paul,” Bowie said. “I share the concern that administrative citations could be misused, which is why this committee is critical. We are designing a system with safeguards to ensure that fines are used for compliance, not as a revenue stream.”

A changing council 

The charter amendment passed three days before Jalali announced she would be stepping down from the council to prioritize her mental and physical health. 

Jalali said she’s proud of many accomplishments during her tenure, including the citations charter change. 

“It feels like a great point of pride for me that I was able to work with my colleagues and the charter commission and our administration to get this done,” Jalali said. “It was not an individual person’s effort by design, and I felt a tremendous sense of responsibility to deliver this charter change.”

Jalali has served on the council since 2018 and was sworn in as president of the first all-female City Council last January. She was the first Iranian American elected official in Minnesota and the first Asian American woman and first openly LGBTQ+ member of the council.

In the letter announcing her departure from office, Jalali said: “Rarely, if ever, are women of color in leadership positions allowed to show the impact on their health of the constant stressors of public leadership. I am following the leadership of Simone Biles and taking a step back, because continuing through injury is unsafe in the short term and unsustainable for the long haul. It is important for me to live out the truth that powerful women of color do have limits, are not superhuman and will not break themselves in the name of the work continuing.”

This week, the council elected Ward 2 member Rebecca Noecker to serve as the body’s new president.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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In the last week, school officials across the country have had to assess what they’d do if U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement agents show up on campus. 

This is because the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security rescinded a policy protecting people from deportation when in “sensitive zones,” which include schools, churches and women’s centers. 

Under the sensitive zone policy, which was created in 2011 and expanded in 2021, ICE could only enter these designated zones in the case of certain exceptions like a threat of terrorism or imminent risk of death. The goal of the policy was to protect undocumented immigrants’ access to essential services like health care without the threat of being deported.

What would Minneapolis and St. Paul schools do if ICE agents come knocking? 

Both districts told MinnPost in emailed statements that they are leaning on existing policy about visitors, including law enforcement. St. Paul Public Schools (SPPS) is also providing training to staff, including principals and security personnel, on how to respond if ICE enters school property. 

Students are encouraged to talk to a counselor, social worker or other trusted staff member if they have any concerns, according to the SPPS statement. The district is also reminding families to update emergency contact information and to seek assistance from community resources if needed, including city of Saint Paul Immigration Resources, Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services and the Immigrant Law Center of Minnesota. 

“The district is closely monitoring these developments and consulting with our city, county and state partners on the latest guidance,” the SPPS statement reads. 

The statement from Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) also said the district is monitoring federal announcements and consulting with partners to assess and respond accordingly. 

“MPS has policies and protocols in place regarding any school visitors, including law enforcement,” according to the MPS statement. 

As districts look at policy around ICE raids, it’s important to note schools cannot deny students admission based on their immigration status, per federal law. Districts also cannot legally ask students or families about their immigration status. 

St. Paul Public Schools 

Under SPPS current policy, only representatives of the St. Paul Police Department may be granted permission to see and interview students in school. 

Visitors to SPPS, including anyone who is not an enrolled student or staff member at the school, must report to the principal or other person in charge of the school building upon arrival. 

The district superintendent develops the procedures around interviewing and interrogation of students  by law enforcement officers while on school property. Private detectives and attorneys are not permitted to interview students while on school property.  

Minneapolis Public Schools 

Generally, students may not be released to law enforcement officers during the school day, though there are exceptions in the policy. 

Law enforcement officers other than those with the Minneapolis Police Department must coordinate attempts to arrest students at school with the district’s Office of Emergency Management, Safety and Security and/or the Minneapolis Police Department and the school administration, according to district policy. 

Law enforcement officers who seek entry into a school for official business must first contact the principal, site administrator or their designee for permission to enter the school unless exigent circumstances exist. Requests from law enforcement officers who seek entry into a school may also be relayed to the school administration through the district’s Office of Emergency Management.

All visitors to Minneapolis School District buildings and sites must register in the school building or designated site administration office and obtain a visitor’s badge.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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A renovation project for an Agate Housing shelter and transitional home that received Minneapolis City Council-passed funding will no longer move forward. 

In September, the council passed a resolution to re-appropriate money from multiple city department surpluses to fund a $1.5 million grant to keep Agate’s 137-bed shelter at 510 S. 8th St. from closing permanently. The building closed in October due to needed renovations and the grant was intended to help Agate possibly reopen its doors. 

On Tuesday, Agate Housing confirmed that it would not be moving forward with planned shelter renovation, according to an email statement from Erik Hansen, the city’s director of community planning and economic development. This means the $1.5 million will no longer be appropriated. 

In an email statement about the situation, Mayor Jacob Frey said: “This result, while unfortunate, is exactly what we communicated to the Council months ago. It underscores the importance of ensuring any use of taxpayer dollars is carefully vetted and goes through a thorough and equitable City process, which the Council refused to do.”

Frey also called Agate “an invaluable partner in our shared work to help people experiencing homelessness.” The city and Agate have partnered to open shelters, provide affordable housing and connect people to services, his statement reads. 

When the council considered the grant, city staff warned the council that such budget decisions have potential consequences. Saray Garnett-Hochuli, deputy city operations officer, sent an email to the council at the time warning that the grant approval was based on a second-quarter projection rather than the year-end budget. Garnett-Hochuli stated that a budget surplus is not recognized until books are closed at year end and all revenues and expenses are recorded. 

The council-passed grant was contingent upon an additional $1.5 million match, which came in September less than a week after the council approved its grant. It’s unclear what will happen to the match. 

Agate has not responded to a request for comment. However, as the council was considering the grant in September, Virginia Brown, vice president of external relations for Agate, told MinnPost — grant or no grant —  that Agate still needed a thorough assessment to know the extent of renovation needed. 

The 100-year-old building includes a 42-bed shelter and 95-bed “low barrier” housing area. An initial assessment by a construction company conducted about a year ago found the building needed between $3 million and $5 million in renovations.

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When an injunction temporarily blocked the Minneapolis 2040 Comprehensive Plan in September 2023 injunction, more than 30 developments with more than 500 housing units were halted. 

That number did not include projects that hypothetically could have been developed, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey said this week. The piece of the plan the lawsuit blocked was specifically about the ability for developers to build duplexes and triplexes in the city and allowed greater density along specified commercial and transit corridors – an effort to increase overall housing density. 

“It halted work, it halted progress, it halted results,” the mayor said during an interview with MinnPost. 

Last week, a judge dismissed the lawsuit brought by Smart Growth Minneapolis and Minnesota Citizens for the Protection of Migratory Birds that led to the injunction. 

So what does this mean for the city? 

“We can now continue the work,” Frey said. “A big part of this (comprehensive plan) was to have a diversity of housing options, and therefore a diversity of people in every neighborhood, socioeconomically diverse, racially diverse, age demographically diverse.” 

How this impacts future housing affordability

Two major components affect a city’s ability to provide affordable housing, Frey said. 

One is a subsidy. In order to provide deeply affordable housing (housing for those making under 30% of the area’s median income), subsidies from various levels of local government are required “because nobody is going to build a building and then lose money on it,” Frey said. 

Second is supply. Like any product on the market, supply and demand directly impact housing prices. When supply is low, prices skyrocket. Think California or New York City. 

The comprehensive plan in simple terms made it possible for large swaths of the city to not only have single-family homes, but also duplexes and triplexes along corridors. Developers can build taller buildings with density in mind, Frey noted.

How this impacts neighborhood diversity 

Old maps of the city designate North Minneapolis as a slum for the city’s Black and Jewish communities. 

When the Civil Rights Act passed, it became illegal to explicitly implement redlining and restrictive covenants. However, Frey said cities across the country — including Minneapolis — found ways to maintain this kind of segregation implicitly through zoning codes. 

“We set it up so that unless you could own really big homes on really big parcels, you can’t live in huge swaths of the city,” Frey said. “If you look at the map, even today, the tale of that zoning policy has continued.”

This is what drove the city’s efforts to create the 2040 Comprehensive Plan back in 2019. 

“While technically speaking, we have allowed for affordable housing in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods, practically speaking, it was impossible to do because: why would you buy a gigantic, super expensive parcel only to put one family in it? If you’re trying to provide affordable housing, you want to put many families in it,” Frey said. “A lot of this stuff was set up very intentionally going back 100 years.” 

What was developed and what was blocked? 

Minneapolis Public Housing used to have scattered single-family home sites across the city — often deteriorating and in need of maintenance. In its place the city was able to put up multiple units in the place of those deteriorating single-family dwellings. 

But when the judge’s ruling and injunction came in 2023, projects like this were put on pause. 

For example, a project to develop 20 “microhomes: for people who are or have been homeless led by Envision Community was set to go before a city planning board when the injunction ordered the city to drop its plan. Because half the project planned on city land at 21st and Penn avenues in north Minneapolis would be possible only under 2040 zoning codes, the group had to reassess the project. 

What the plaintiffs in the case have to say 

Last year, when the Minnesota Legislature passed the law that led to the dismissal of the case, Jack Perry, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, believed it wouldn’t be dismissed because he claimed the law was not explicitly retroactive. 

The language that ended the lawsuit could be found in a couple of paragraphs within the 1,400-page bill passed during last year’s legislative session and later signed by Gov. Tim Walz. One paragraph states that comprehensive plans adopted in “the most recent decennial review” and for “subsequent reviews” by cities are not subject to legal challenges under the Minnesota Environmental Rights Act, or MERA, which allows Minnesotans to sue on behalf of the land and water.

Taft Law, the law firm representing the plaintiffs, sent MinnPost the following statement on the lawsuit’s dismissal: “Using the State’s oldest environmental law (MERA), the Smart Growth plaintiffs had two incredible accomplishments. First, they persuaded the Minnesota Supreme Court to expand MERA to cover the significantly impactful comprehensive plans, even well-intended ones like Minneapolis’ 2040 Plan. Second, they then persuaded the Minnesota Court of Appeals to affirm its MERA judgment against Minneapolis’ 2040 Plan.”

Ultimately, the firm wrote, it lost the case due to a “legislative bailout.”

Update: This story has been updated to specify that the Minneapolis 2040 Plan also allowed for greater density along specified commercial and transit corridors.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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WASHINGTON – Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey pushed back Thursday on Trump administration plans to review a newly negotiated police-reform agreement with the city.

“Regardless of the Trump administration’s announcement, we will be moving forward with the terms outlined in the consent decree,” the mayor said in a statement. “Our city worked hard on this agreement, we are prepared to implement the reforms and we are going to get this done.”

The consent decree between the city and the Justice Department aims to curb excessive force and racial discrimination in the Minneapolis Police Department and is a reaction to the police killing of George Floyd more than four years ago.

But Kathleen Wolfe, President Trump’s new supervisor of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which negotiated the agreement when President Biden was still in office, issued a memo that puts the implementation of that consent decree in question.

The memo – first reported by the Washington Post— says that the civil rights division must notify the Justice Department’s chief of staff of any consent decrees the division has finalized within the last 90 days.

That would include the one regarding the Minneapolis Police Department, which was finalized and approved by the City Council earlier this month, as well as similar agreements the Justice Department has negotiated with Louisville and Memphis, which also could be in jeopardy.

Minneapolis’ consent decree is now before U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson in Minnesota for final approval. Magnuson was appointed by former President Ronald Reagan.

It’s unclear if Magnuson can or would reject the agreement, which took years in the making. The Minneapolis police department on Thursday joined Frey in their defiance of the Justice Department’s plans to review the deal.

“We’re moving forward,” said Sgt. Garrett Parten, a spokesman for the department. 

The city added in a statement that the reforms would happen “with or without the federal government.”

The consent decree would usher in new policies regarding the use of force and how Minneapolis police officers interact with members of the community. It would also expand a behavioral crisis response team that would handle emergencies in which a police officer is not necessary.

And millions of dollars would be spent on the reform efforts and on new staff and technology to carry out the agreement’s requirements.

In a separate action, the Justice Department has issued a freeze on new civil rights investigations and litigation. It’s unclear how long this freeze will last.

MinnPost reporter Winter Keefer contributed to this story. 

The post Frey pushes back on Trump administration threats to police reform consent decree appeared first on MinnPost.

Late December, Nicollet Mall was replete with people, along with clusters of portable toilets scattered throughout. 

Those portapotties were there to support those attending Holidazzle, the annual holiday celebration organized by the Minneapolis Downtown Council. 

Outside of Holidazzle, however, facilities for people to relieve themselves are few and far between. The Minneapolis Downtown Council hopes to change that by increasing the amount of available bathrooms by 20% in the next two years. They don’t know exactly how they will do so, but plan to convene a series of meetings this year to strategize. 

The Downtown Minneapolis approach

There are a few places you can go downtown when nature calls, mostly in publicly-owned buildings such as the Minneapolis Central Library and City Hall. Privately owned restrooms available to the public include those at the Downtown Improvement District offices at Sixth Street and Nicollet Mall, as well as the Target. 

Many more restrooms in privately owned buildings are a hassle for people like Seany Thephachane to use. Thephachane is a courier who sometimes makes deliveries downtown. “Most of the time, I gotta go inside a building to look for one. Sometimes, it’s like, ‘you gotta use a key card to get in.’ I have not tried asking, I just kind of skip it because I don’t have time to ask,” Thephachane said as he hung out at Holidazzle with friends. 

Other businesses have restricted access to their restrooms in recent years. One business told KARE 11 that it did not want to open their restrooms to the public because some people ended up camping in them or doing drugs. And Target in recent years closed its gender-specific, multi-stall restrooms; people needing to use a restroom must line up for a single-stall by the registers and wait for a staff member to enter a code. 

Meanwhile, none of the publicly available restrooms are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The Minneapolis Downtown Improvement District (DID), a subsidiary of the Minneapolis Downtown Council, tried to deploy overnight bathrooms twice in the past several years. During the fair weather months, DID hosts Warehouse District Live on N. First Avenue between N. Fifth and N. Sixth streets. From early evening on Friday and Saturday to 3 a.m. the following mornings, they have portable toilets available, as well as karaoke, inflatable ball toss and food trucks. 

Before Warehouse District Live, in 2019, DID deployed 24/7 restrooms in the form of portable toilets throughout downtown as part of their 100 Restrooms Project. The program was suspended when the pandemic began. 

Ben Shardlow, chief of staff for DID and the Minneapolis Downtown Council, said the 100 Restrooms Project had challenges with people abusing the portable toilets. “There were people who barricaded themselves inside the restrooms, so no one else could use the facility, for days at a time. Shardlow said in a phone interview, adding that people also were “aggressively unclean” in them. 

For Jay Matthews, who is unhoused, access to a restroom is important to be able to maintain his hygiene. “If we’re trying to prevent disease and we’re trying to prevent being sick, you want people to be able to use the bathroom in places they can dispose of this stuff without making everybody sick. No one is gonna hire you if you smell like s***. Just cause you (sic) homeless, you shouldn’t have to look like it all the time,” Matthews said as he participated in a panel convened by Central Lutheran Church on a recent Thursday morning. Matthews added that he knows people who have been cited for sex-related offenses for urinating in public. 

At the same panel, Michelle P, who declined to provide the spelling of her last name, wants to ensure restrooms for women are only used by women. She cites one experience where she complained to security at a public building  that men were present in the women’s restroom. 

DID’s Shardlow said the Downtown Council is talking with partners and convening implementation committees to address the lack of restrooms downtown in an effort to hit the 20% goal in the next two years. “There isn’t a lot of detail behind it. There’s a whole lot more work that needs to follow to actually move the needle and get better public restroom access downtown,” Shardlow said. 

How have other cities made restrooms available in their downtowns? 

Minneapolis is far from the only city with a public restroom challenge. Winnipeg took a shot at addressing it, first by deploying temporary toilets, then building a permanent restroom facility, called Amoowigamig, in 2022 using shipping containers. The cost to deploy both was funded by just around 900,000 Canadian dollars in grants from Canadian organizations. 

Like public toilets in other cities, Winnipeg’s temporary restrooms were vandalized. “Folks have taken away the toilet seat or the toilet paper dispenser, the urinal, anything that was removable was removed, and in some cases, the washrooms were completely lost to fire,” said Chris Brens, manager for community development at the city of Winnipeg. 

To combat vandalism, the city considered staffing Amoowigamig, which means “public washroom” in Ojibwe, with security guards. After gathering community feedback, Brens said they ultimately decided to staff the restroom with peer support workers, who have lived experiences being unhoused and are retained through Indigenous-led social service organization Ma Mawi Wi Chi Itata. 

The peer support workers connect unhoused users to harm reduction supplies, including clean needles and pipes, condoms, Narcan, feminine products, as well as permanent housing. Peer support workers are at Amoowigamig 16 hours a day, costing the city of Winnipeg 270,000 Canadian dollars in 2024. 

Meanwhile, California cities San Francisco, Palo Alto and San Jose all have public self-cleaning toilets furnished by French advertising firm JCDecaux, all of which are free to use and some of which are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

San Francisco began experimenting with the self-cleaning restrooms, which were reported to be the first of their kind in the world, in the early 1990s to combat street feces. In 1998, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors amended an agreement with JCDecaux to erect 25 restrooms on sidewalks and at parks. Users can use the restrooms for up to 20 minutes before the door automatically opens on them. The restrooms are also equipped with a button that dials 911 when pressed twice, as well as an emergency lever to open the door to exit. 

The self-cleaning facilities in Palo Alto and San Jose are rented from JCDecaux. San Francisco’s toilets are paid for through advertising, with the city receiving a small cut. 

The toilets aren’t perfect, and some break down. One unit near the city’s Ferry Building remains out of order after first responders used the “jaws of life” to rescue someone from it in November. 

In the past, the facilities have had a reputation for fostering drug use, sex work and shelter. In 2014, the city’s public works department hired attendants to supervise some self-cleaning toilets up to 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Some toilet users say people use the restrooms less often for drugs, sex and shelter with the presence of attendants. 

Not everyone appreciates them, though. Junior Rodriguez, who draws cartoons and is unhoused, said he sometimes needs to use a restroom for longer than 20 minutes. “Sometimes you feel like taking a little longer because you ate something,” Rodriguez said after emerging from an unattended self-cleaning restroom near the city’s Ferry Building. 

In 2020 the Board of Supervisors tried to kill the restroom contract, which had been renewed the year prior, in the wake of a corruption scandal that rocked the city’s public works department and landed its former director in federal prison. A representative from a rival advertising company testified at a Board of Supervisors meeting that they offered the city’s public works department more restrooms and money, only for the department to cancel the request for proposals and rewrite how proposals were evaluated. 

How should Minneapolis proceed?

Ward 3 City Council member Michael Rainville believes DID should work with businesses to open their restrooms to the general public. “They’re already there. When these retail-type buildings were built, they included public restrooms, but over time they just haven’t made them accessible to the public,” Rainville said. 

Matthews wants those retail restrooms open and attended to by unhoused people like himself. “I’ll take that job. I’ll take some money. I’ll sit there and make sure, hey, man (makes a knocking gesture), wellness check. Um, you OK in there? No drug use up in here. They’re making all this money raising the prices on food and everything, you pay another person minimum wage or something to go in there,” Matthews said. 

Street Voices For Change offered to monitor Target’s downtown Minneapolis store restrooms to keep them open but could never work out a deal. 

“Every time we as Street Voices organized to meet with somebody to have this conversation, they change the decision maker. And they just kept moving around the decision maker so that we could never then organize and strategize and get our questions answered,” said the Reverend Melissa Pohlman, pastor for Community Ministries at Central Lutheran Church. Target did not respond to requests to discuss the single-stall restroom or attempts to partner with Street Voices For Change on monitoring the downtown store’s restroom. 

Outside of retail spaces, Rainville adds he is open to studying building restrooms on city streets so long as the city can address costs and security issues, which he defines as people misbehaving and infringing “upon the rights of people who are behaving themselves.”

Council member Katie Cashman, who represents much of downtown and Loring Park, believes DID should work with the city to establish more public restrooms, citing the Peavey Plaza restroom trailer as an example. “The Peavey Plaza seasonal restroom trailer is a great example of a successful public restroom amenity that serves tourists walking from the Convention Center to Nicollet Mall, as well as downtown residents who are just out and about running errands,” Cashman said. 

Jairus Sullivan recounted how convenient it was when Holidazzle was happening, because its presence came with portable toilets. “That was awesome. Just roll down Nicollet and pop into a port-a-potty,” Sullivan said at the same panel Matthews participated in. Sullivan believes more portable toilets downtown would effectively address the lack of restrooms. 

Meanwhile, Jay4 Vang said while attending Holidazzle that downtown restrooms should not be portable. “Who wants to sit on a cold porta potty? Having indoor bathrooms would be ideal. Me personally, I wouldn’t want to go into a cold porta potty,” Vang said while hanging out with friends at Holidazzle. 

Hopkins resident Jenna Benson would feel safe using a public restroom with glass that changes opacity depending on whether or not it is occupied. “They’re clear when there’s no one in there, and then I go in, they turn a color so no one can see it,” Benson said at Holidazzle. “I feel like one of those bathrooms would really be inviting; I want to see what I’m going into and not get trapped into, like a gross situation.” Such restrooms exist in Japan.

Maple Grove resident Austin Doan, who was visiting Holidazzle with two siblings, suggests the restrooms should only be accessible with codes or an app. “Because if it’s just unlocked, then people will probably ruin it. It’s not safe for people to use it,” Doan said. 

Meanwhile, Bryan Doan, who uses they/them pronouns and is one of Austin’s siblings, suggested people share bathroom codes with one another on social media. “I live in New York, and they have these grassroots efforts where people just go on Twitter and they give bathroom codes,” Bryan said.

The post Where are the public restrooms in downtown Minneapolis? appeared first on MinnPost.

In three years, the former Northstar Center in downtown Minneapolis was transformed from a vacant office space into 216 apartment units now called Groove Lofts at Northstar Center.

While developers and architects have typically seen conversions as a particular challenge, these kinds of developments have also become something considered necessary to reinvigorate struggling downtown cores in the post-pandemic era. 

Changing use of buildings has always been “part of the equation” for urban developers, said Carole Mette, senior developer for Sherman Associates’ Northstar Center project. With the rise in hybrid and remote work since COVID, struggling office buildings have been at the center of this puzzle, she added. 

Before conversion, the Northstar Center was largely vacant, Mette said. It also qualified for historic tax credits, had the right physical attributes for the renovation and was situated in a central downtown location. Mette said these factors meant it “checked all those boxes for a building to make for a good candidate.” 

Groove Lofts is a “mixed-income” building. There are 44 units earmarked for tenants making under half of the median wage. It also isn’t the first phase of the overall Northstar Center redevelopment: Hotel Indigo and Star Bar & Bistro were completed in 2023.

Because the building was originally developed as office space, the units have unique floorplans with over 40 layouts. Groove Lofts also offers 10,000 square feet of amenities, including a media lounge, an arcade with karaoke and virtual reality rooms, a maker’s space, coworking lounge, a fitness center, and rooftop club room with a deck and storage space.

The $98 million project used about $35 million in federal, state and city subsidies. 

Northstar Center was the birthplace of the Minneapolis skyway system. Through the skyways, residents of Groove Lofts are connected to Capella Tower, Rand Tower, Wells Fargo Center and Baker Center.

Sherman is also nearing completion of the office-to-residential conversion of Landmark Tower in St. Paul.

These types of conversions may not be a straightforward fix for a waning downtown tax base, but Mette said there are economic benefits many people don’t realize. For example, conversions require more labor than full reconstruction projects. 

“They do help add to the tax base because, while a fully occupied high end office building will generate more real estate taxes than that same amount of square footage of an apartment building, the stressed vacant office building that has a very low assessed value isn’t doing that,” Mette said.  

What makes a good conversion target?

Numerous factors go into whether or not an office is a good fit for residential conversion. Last year, architecture firm Gensler published a study that evaluated the potential conversions of 20 downtown St. Paul office spaces. This study was commissioned by the St. Paul Downtown Alliance, and Gensler has not conducted this same study for Minneapolis. However, Bill Baxley, a Gensler principal based in Minneapolis, said the main points in St. Paul apply to other cities. 

“I think that Northstar conversion is going to be kind of a posterchild for what we need to do. It’s bold, it’s doing all the things we talk about — not just office-to-residential but also true mixed-use in our urban core,” Baxley said.  

The study’s top two factors considered in conversion feasibility had to do with the total floor area of each story of a building — otherwise known as floorplates. Anyone talking about building conversion will likely bring up floorplates quite a lot.

“Buildings that have good bones, simple framework, reasonable distance from core to the exterior, are just miles ahead money-wise and fiscal-space wise to make those things work” Baxley said. 

This makes sense. If a building’s floorplate is too large or oddly shaped, a large amount of interior square footage needs to be considered for reuse outside of a residential unit. People don’t want to live in an apartment with no windows. 

That doesn’t mean an ill-fitting floorplate is necessarily a deal breaker, but it is a challenge, Baxley said. 

“What do you do with those buildings with large floorplates? You kind of have to start cutting some holes in those floors, you’ve got to start introducing light in some other areas,” Baxley said. “Then you can see that building in a very different way, potentially, for residential — but you have to modify those plates.” 

Interestingly, this makes older buildings often better suited for conversion because of how air conditioning technology evolved over the last century. Access to windows used to be a bigger priority when it came to heat mitigation in buildings. Air conditioning was sourced from outside air in through large buildings from the mid-1960s to the early 90s, which had a “massive, massive effect on design and architecture.” 

With newer buildings like many in Minneapolis, Baxley said, “you sort of have to hack into them in a different way. They allow modification and additions and subtractions in a different way as well. We’re going to get radical with them in a different way than St. Paul.” 

And not all buildings should be converted, he added. It is often easier to build a new development rather than converting an existing building. 

“These things don’t pencil themselves out as good development deals yet unless they get some serious incentives from the city or elsewhere… We need to test some things out quickly or we’re going to be in a much worse situation.”

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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Mid-December not only marks the beginning of the holiday season for many. For cities, it’s also typically the end of budget season.

Like tense family gatherings over the holidays, this budget cycle in the Twin Cities came with its fair share of disagreements — to say the least. While Minneapolis budgeting was messy, long and eventful, those paying attention saw the city’s 2025 budget wrapped before going on holiday break. 

The same could not be said for St. Paul. Going into Christmas week, MinnPost was still trying to figure out which version of the budget would be sent to the state Dec. 30: the first one passed by the City Council or a later version that included line-item vetoes by Mayor Melvin Carter. The confusion centered around a timing snafu. 

In St. Paul’s case, a day made all the difference. The mayor claimed the council was a day too late to override his vetoes. At the same time, council President Mitra Jalali believed the council’s veto stood because it was before the Dec. 30 deadline to deliver the budget to the state. 

On Wednesday of last week, Carter’s office restated in an email that the mayor’s line-item-vetoed budget had prevailed and the council’s override vote was rendered moot. A city spokesperson said in the email: “Any action taken past the Dec. 18 at 11:59 p.m. deadline is unenforceable.” 

However, last week, Jalali maintained that the council had successfully overridden the budget with Carter’s vetoes.  

“The council’s position is that we acted as quickly as possible within our authority and well within state law of the deadline… Items came to us after the last meeting of the year, and in contradiction of previous communication,” she said. 

MinnPost has continued to try to clarify this discrepancy over the last few weeks and last Thursday requested a copy of the city’s final submitted budget. That had not yet arrived at the time this story was posted on Monday.

Here’s a timeline of what went down: 

Dec. 11: Before City Council budget deliberation, Carter proposed a budget compromise after the council had rejected his prior proposal. However, the majority of the council ultimately shot down Carter’s counterproposal and moved forward with its own budget. Notably, Carter has five business days to veto council action, per the city’s charter. This meant Carter’s power to veto budget items expired at end of day Dec. 18. 

Dec. 18: Prior to the City Council’s regularly scheduled meeting, Carter sent an email urging council members to change particular items in the budget the council passed the week before. The mayor told the council that all changes to the budget needed to be completed by this day, per the charter. The council made no changes, and immediately after it adjourned Carter issued his line-item vetoes. 

Dec. 19: The council held a special meeting to address Carter’s vetoes and voted to override all of them. This meeting was placed on the council’s schedule a week in advance. 

Dec. 30: The day Carter’s office says is the state deadline to deliver the final city budget. 

More about the vetoes

Through his line-item vetoes, Carter cut $2.3 million from the council’s nearly $390 million budget. The largest cut was $1.8 million intended for council office renovations. 

The mayor said the renovations were unnecessary and put this funding toward non-emergency police overtime, which was at the heart of much of the city’s budget debate. The mayor’s office has said “non-emergency” police overtime is necessary for things like back-filling patrol shifts for officers away on military or medical leave, time-sensative investigations and testifying in criminal trials. Jalali said at the meeting held a day after the Dec. 18 deadline Carter cited as a reason he believes the override vote is moot that the renovations were meant to make the offices more accessible to those with disabilities. 

An additional four line-item vetoes went toward Carter’s goal to rehire a new director for the city’s Department of Human Rights and Equal Economic Opportunity (HREEO), a job he says is required under the charter. To fund that position, he vetoed $160,000 in funding for street festival security costs, $50,000 for the council’s audit committee and $15,000 for the St. Paul Children’s Collaborative, a group of local agencies that plans and coordinates local services for children. Carter also vetoed the decision to eliminate $227,000 budgeted for the HREEO director. 

Carter also directed city department leaders to prepare to freeze new hiring and contracting across all city departments.

What the state says about it 

The Office of the State Auditor’s legal team declined to comment on an interpretation of the city’s charter in this situation. However, under state statute, the city’s legal counsel could request a legal opinion from the state attorney general’s office.

In the past, the AG’s office has indicated that a city council is the entity that should interpret its charter and ordinances, with assistance from a city attorney if legal interpretations are needed.  

So at the halfway point of the first month of the year, the uncertainty over St. Paul’s budget disagreement continues even as checks need to be cut and city operations must continue. MinnPost will continue to provide updates on the situation as more is learned.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

The post St. Paul council and mayor still at odds over the city’s 2025 budget appeared first on MinnPost.

“I am a refugee and I came to this country when I was five,” said Ka Vang, Meet Minneapolis’ vice president of Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Access.“We came to the Chicagoland area, had no clothes, came in the winter, no shoes, nothing that would prepare us for the harsh Midwestern winters.” 

Vang and her family, who arrived in 1980 from Laos, benefited from various clothing closets and pantries where they were able to find items that would keep them warm in a new country. Later, in November 2022, Vang connected with Paula Wilhelm at Hennepin Healthcare and began the annual Meet Minneapolis Warm Winter Clothing Drive – where Meet Minneapolis’ partner businesses work to donate warm clothing to Hennepin Healthcare. 

Many of those who need winter clothing for their hospital discharge are people facing housing insecurity, said Geoffrey Roe, the nursing manager of Hennepin Healthcare’s emergency department. The department is the busiest in the state and cared for more than 100,000 patients in 2024, of which about a third self-reported housing insecurity according to Roe. 

Other patient populations who may need clothing after discharge include people who have been in accidents that lead to their clothes being cut off their bodies in order to treat them. As a Level 1 adult and pediatric trauma center – the highest designation for trauma services – Hennepin Healthcare also receives patients transferred from nearby states who are in need of specialized and immediate care.

“It has been a frigid couple of weeks, and so we know now more than ever the importance of making sure people are clothed appropriately,” said Jennifer DeCubellis, CEO of Hennepin Healthcare. “We’re seeing frostbite. We’re seeing hypothermia, as the state’s largest safety net hospital. We see an incredible amount of trauma come in.”

The cold can also negatively affect those with pre-existing health conditions. According to the American Heart Association, because the cold causes blood vessels to constrict and raises blood pressure, people who are at risk of heart disease have a higher risk of stroke or heart attacks in cold weather. People with respiratory diseases like asthma may also be affected by cold air constricting airways leading to “wheezing, coughing, shortness of breath, or a burning feeling in the chest.” 

Sending patients out in appropriate clothing is not just a matter of preserving their health, but also their dignity. 

“Realistically, I feel like half of our job is providing comfort and dignity and half of it is providing (patients) safety from the weather,” said Roe, who noted that the emergency department has a clothing closet of its own, but shares that closet with other departments, such as inpatient units and pediatric units, to ensure that anyone who arrives at Hennepin Healthcare and says they need clothing for outside weather is able to receive something appropriate for the weather and for their own dignity (such as headcoverings for religious reasons and clothing items for trans and nonbinary people), along with assistance from Hennepin Healthcare’s social work team or referrals to outside services as needed. 

When temperatures feel like they are below 30 degrees (wind chill, etc.), the emergency department makes sure patients have somewhere to go or stay indoors. 

“We work to try to make sure those patients are somewhere in a shelter or something before 11 p.m.,” said Roe. “If we can’t find some place for them, we try to hold on to them until at least 4 a.m.” 

“Yesterday, as donations were coming in for today’s event … our team members were in the emergency clothing room looking for items for a patient,” said DeCubellis. “That patient was discharging in 15 minutes and did not have appropriate clothing to get out of here. And one of our team members in the room knew this event was happening today, said, ‘Give me that 15 minutes. I’m gonna run across campus. I’m gonna make sure that they leave safely and they leave with respect and dignity.’”

Over the course of their first two years, the network of hospitality businesses partnering with Meet Minneapolis were able to collect more than $15,000 in new winter clothing and associated items, such as boots and hats, for children and adults. At a press event on Thursday, however, it was announced that more than $22,000 in donations had been received for this particular drive, which ran from Nov. 18 2024 to Jan. 6. Vang later added that with clothes still coming in that the drive would likely result in more than $23,000 worth of donations. 

Some of Meet Minneapolis’ partnered businesses, according to Vang, were very creative in their approach to soliciting donations. 

“The Marquette (Hotel) and Windows at Marquette, what they did was they hosted some watch parties in their lounge,” said Vang. “What they asked people to do was just to give a dollar tip or a few dollars tip to the Warm Winter Clothes Drive in a little jar. And they collected over $800.”

“If anybody hears about this (event) I want them to know that Minneapolis cares,” said Vang. “For so long, I think people have told other narratives about what Minneapolis is and what Minneapolis isn’t. I wanted to tell a different narrative.”

Deanna Pistono

Deanna Pistono is MinnPost’s Race & Health Equity fellow. Follow her on Twitter @deannapistono or email her at dpistono@minnpost.com.

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In announcing a settlement with Minneapolis for police reform, U.S. Department of Justice officials cited five other cities that have seen success following similar court-ordered action: Seattle, Portland, Newark, Albuquerque and New Orleans.

“Cities that have worked collaboratively with the Justice Department have made important, tangible progress toward better, safer and lawful policing,” U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said Monday. 

The Minneapolis consent decree comes nearly five years after the murder of George Floyd and almost two years since the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a report finding excessive force and discrimination within the Minneapolis Police Department against Black and Indigenous people. 

But it’s common for it to take years for federal court agreements like the one in Minneapolis to take effect. The federal consent decree process was first introduced in 1994. 

It’s no coincidence the Minneapolis City Council approved the settlement with the DOJ two weeks before the Jan. 20 inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump. During his first term, Trump called consent decrees a “war on police,” so his upcoming administration poses a threat to this sort of oversight. The consent decree will become legally binding once a federal judge signs off on it.

Clarke, who has 30 years of experience working on police reform, said it’s clear consent decrees are successful in achieving reform. 

Here’s a look at those cities: 

The Seattle Police Department 

Seattle was placed under federal consent decree in 2012 after community members and organizers rallied for federal police oversight following the police murder of deaf Indigenous woodcarver John T. Williams in 2010. 

A federal judge terminated most provisions of this consent decree in 2023 after determining the department had completed “significant policing reform.” 

According to the DOJ, the department reduced its use of serious force by 60%, with force used in only one-quarter of one percent of all events to which officers respond. SPD also developed an advanced crisis intervention program in which civilian mental health professionals and non-police mobile crisis teams respond to behavioral health crisis incidents. Department officers are now also trained on how to “secure people’s rights” during police investigation stops. 

“The court monitor found that officers complied with legal and policy requirements in almost all instances it assessed,” according to a DOJ news release. 

The Portland Police Bureau 

Portland was placed under a federal consent decree after the city entered a settlement in a 2012 federal lawsuit that accused the police department of using excessive force against people with mental illness. The lawsuit stemmed from a DOJ investigation that launched in 2011. The city and DOJ entered a settlement agreement in 2014. 

The court terminated portions of this consent decree in 2023, concluding that the police bureau “sustained substantial compliance” for three years. This compliance included implemented provisions around “electronic control weapons” (such as use of tasers) and the creation of multiple additional oversight committees for behavioral health response, police training, communication, coordination and citizen review of the department. 

The termination of parts of this consent decree required the city to select an independent monitor to oversee compliance with the settlement rather than the DOJ being responsible for this, according to local publication the Portland Mercury. 

Before this partial termination, the DOJ reported in 2022 that the city was out of compliance with several parts of the agreement, including police response to the racial justice protests of 2020.

The Newark Police Department 

Newark entered a consent decree in 2016 after a United States Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey and DOJ 2014 report found “a pattern and practice of unconstitutional policing” by the Newark Police Department. The report found Newark’s police officers had no legal basis for 75% of their pedestrian stops from 2009 to 2012, which were conducted disproportionally against Black people. It was also found that the Newark police were detaining people for “milling,” “loitering” or “wandering.”

In accordance with the settlement reached in 2016, a federal court approved an independent police monitoring team led by former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey. 

Newark officers now conduct stops in compliance with constitutional standards, Clarke said at the Monday news conference in Minneapolis. The city also developed community-member-run safety systems like a community street team of non-police responders. 

“These efforts have been successful at reducing the burden on law enforcement and reduced crime, which is down 40% since we entered the decree,” Clarke said. 

The Albuquerque Police Department

The Albuquerque Police Department is an example of a department now considered to be nearly in full compliance after nine years of court oversight, clocking in at 99% compliance, according to the DOJ. 

The department was placed under a consent decree in 2015 after a DOJ investigation in 2014, a year the department faced deep scrutiny over its use of force and the number of cases where police officers shot civilians. 

The decree was lifted last year after officers were equipped with body cameras, increased crisis intervention training and a new policing reform office, new increased officer training was implemented and a new policing reform office was formed in the city. 

The city remains in a two-year oversight period during which they must demonstrate their ability to sustain the court-mandated reforms outlined in the decree. 

During the Monday news conference in Minneapolis, Clarke said nearly 5% of the call volume to the Albuquerque Police Department is now diverted to the Albuquerque Community Safety Department, which sends a team of civilian responders to assist people with behavioral health needs. 

Additionally, according to the DOJ, officers now receive training on using tasers to “ensure that officers only use these weapons when lawful and necessary.” The department now has trained specialized officers to respond to behavioral health crises and created a new agency called Albuquerque Community Safety to send trained mental health professionals to 911 calls involving behavioral health issues. 

The New Orleans Police Department 

The DOJ entered a consent degree agreement with the New Orleans Police Department in 2013, two years after a Department of Justice investigation found evidence of racial bias and misconduct conducted by police. 

The 2011 DOJ investigation found New Orleans police used deadly force without justification, repeatedly made unconstitutional arrests and engaged in racial profiling, and officer-involved shootings and in-custody deaths were “investigated inadequately or not at all.”

Clarke said, in New Orleans, the police department went from a high of 22 “critical incidents” in 2012 to five “critical incidents” in 2023. 

In 2024, there was a push to end the over decade-long consent decree in New Orleans. However, this move has faced pushback within the last year. Residents speaking against ending the consent decree have said in meetings they’ve seen and continued to experience racial disparities in use of force, cited poor handling of sex crimes and said community engagement remains lacking. 

More about the Minneapolis consent decree

The Minneapolis City Council was in closed session for about seven hours on Monday before taking a unanimous vote in favor of the settlement with the U.S. Justice Department. 

This consent decree has long been in the making: The DOJ launched an investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021 following the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin, and officials announced their findings in 2023. 

This agreement makes Minneapolis the first city to enter an agreement like this at both the state and federal level. Chosen in the last year to oversee the state decree, Effective Law Enforcement for All will serve as the city’s third-party evaluator for both the state and federal agreements. This is the organization that will oversee police department implementation of agreed-upon policies.

Some of the reforms under the decree have already begun to be implemented. For example, MPD launched an Implementation Unit last year tasked with improving data collection and reaching court compliance.

Winter Keefer

Winter Keefer is MinnPost’s Metro reporter. Follow her on Twitter or email her at wkeefer@minnpost.com.

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