When it comes to dating, yes means yes, no means no, and no action probably means they ghosted you for one reason or another and you should move on.
However, different rules apply to the Met Council and their light rail projects, as well as highways being planned by the Minnesota Department of Transportation. For example, this fall, the Met Council will give cities a statute-mandated opportunity to say “yes” or “no” to the Blue Line Extension project’s engineering design.
But instead of no meaning “no,” no means “they have to say the conditions to get approval,” Hennepin County spokesperson Kyle Mianulli said in an interview after the Aug. 8 Blue Line Extension Corridor Management Committee meeting.
And cities can’t ghost the Met Council, because if they do, they’re consenting to the project. It’s why Ward 5 Minneapolis City Council member Jeremiah Ellison intends to vote to grant municipal consent on the project.
“If municipal consent isn’t passed, then the project can still move forward. We probably create some complications, but then the city’s voice at that point is essentially moot. They’re gonna go around you, they’re gonna take those other avenues, they’re gonna get their approvals elsewhere and it’s never coming back before you,” Ellison said in an interview after the same Corridor Management Committee meeting.
County and Met Council officials say the municipal consent process is more of an opportunity for cities to formally share their feedback on how the project should be designed, and that they will work with local communities on a solution. They add it’s not an opportunity to ask for things outside the scope of the design, such as rebuilding an adjacent county road and asking for the project to instead be a bus rapid transit line.
What is municipal consent and why ask for it now?
State statute requires that the Metropolitan Council present their engineering drawings for light rail projects to cities, counties, and/or townships for approval. The communities then have at least 30 days to hold a public hearing, and 45 days after the hearing date to decide whether to formally approve the project via resolution, informally approve the project by not taking a vote, or disapprove of the project.
Statute does not provide communities a way to approve engineering drawings with conditions; they can only do so through disapproval. Through the disapproval process, communities have to provide conditions project planners would have to meet to gain their approval. The Met Council will then convene a hearing to understand the changes and decide what about the plans will change within 60 days of the communities’ hearing. If the plans change in conformance with what the communities ask for, planners don’t have to return with revised plans for consent.
Highway projects have a similar process. However, since the Minnesota Department of Transportation does not have a board, any appeal of highway design plans must go before a three-member board appointed by the dissenting community, MnDOT, and one either mutually agreed to by MnDOT and the community, or the chief justice of the Supreme Court.
Blue Line Extension planners are seeking municipal consent now, after years of planning, so they can conduct environmental review on any changes that the communities want made. The plans are currently at 30% design, which means they have an idea of where the alignment and stations will be, but not detailed plans for the stations and the surrounding intersections.
“Some of the outcomes of municipal consent might need to change the environmental document. They may ask for something, we’d have to study that in the environmental document before it could be finalized,” deputy general manager Nick Thompson said shortly after presenting at a July 9 city of Minneapolis’ Intergovernmental Relations Committee.
The county and the Met Council already delayed the municipal consent process by about six to eight months. Project planners needed to change the alignment to not run on Lyndale Avenue North because neighbors there vociferously opposed it. “That would not have made it through municipal consent in Minneapolis,” said Dan Soler, transit and mobility director for Hennepin County.
It’s possible communities may have to vote on municipal consent more than once. This happened with the Southwest Light Rail project, when planners redesigned it to reduce costs by $250 million.
Changes possible, within reason
Comments cities submitted as part of the environmental review process may hint at what cities plan to ask for as part of the municipal consent process. For example, a letter the Minneapolis City Council voted to submit in July calls for adding a light rail station at Washington and West Broadway. Both the city and council member Ellison say the light rail station would connect Northside residents with destinations that they have a hard time reaching, which include parks, bars, restaurants, job centers, and the Mississippi River.
“Connectivity from north Minneapolis to the river specifically matters to us and my community where, you see, we’ve had the North Side be cut off from the river and other parts of the city with the 94 trench being there, with the 394 cutting off a lot of north Minneapolis from other parts of the city. We feel a little bit on an island, and we want more points of connectivity along the way,” Ellison said.
The process does not allow cities to ask for changes deemed outside of the scope of the project’s current design. For example, cities would not be able to ask for the project to study bus rapid transit instead. “We’re asking them about whether they support the current design, which is a light rail transit project,” Thompson said.
“BRT would be a whole different project. We’ve been advancing a light rail project, and so you can’t just take this rail project and make it a BRT,” Mianulli added. Changing the project could endanger the agency’s ability to obtain federal funds for the corridor.
Cities also would not be able to ask for road improvements the Met Council deems to be outside of the corridor, though they may be able to ask for it as an environmental impact mitigation measure. The cities of Robbinsdale and Crystal are concerned about traffic spilling over from Bottineau Boulevard over to West Broadway between Douglas Drive and 42nd Avenue, as county and Met Council planners aim to reduce the lanes on Bottineau from six to four.
Crystal city officials want Hennepin County to rebuild West Broadway between Douglas Drive and the city limits so the road can handle any traffic spillover. “Their own regional forecast model shows 1,000 vehicles per day shift by 2040 from Bottineau to Broadway. It should be obvious that reducing the number of lanes on Bottineau is going to increase that shift, exacerbate that shift,” John Sutter, Crystal’s community development director, said in a phone interview.
County transportation planners don’t plan to rebuild West Broadway between Douglas and 42nd to mitigate any impacts caused by construction of the Blue Line extension. They believe traffic will continue to flow at, in Soler’s words, “an adequate level of service,” which wouldn’t call for mitigation.
Cities and the general public would also not be able to ask for conditions to address anti-displacement, because it does not pertain to the project’s design. Hennepin County on Monday released a guide to implement the Blue Line Extension’s anti-displacement recommendations.
All four cities, as well as Hennepin County, plan to hold hearings to hear from their residents what they should consider for municipal consent in the coming weeks. The communities will then vote whether or not to grant municipal consent before Oct. 10.
How has municipal consent played out in the past?
To date, no city has formally dissented over proposals to build light rail in the Twin Cities. Every city along the Southwest Light Rail project approved plans for light rail in their communities.
Although cities provided nonbinding conditions as a part of approval, project officials say they still worked with communities on those conditions. For example: St. Louis Park’s resolution to provide municipal consent included a condition to reconstruct the Cedar Lake Regional Trail at two city intersections so they don’t intersect. The trail, which is now grade-separated because it passes under both streets through a tunnel, reopened in July. And Eden Prairie’s resolution called for the Prairie Center Drive viaduct to be designed such that it “complements” the experience around Purgatory Creek Park and the Veterans’ Memorial; indeed, the viaducts have carvings of the wildlife found at the nearby creek.
For the first iteration of the Blue Line Extension, the Crystal City Council in February 2016 passed a resolution neither approving nor disapproving the project’s design. One of the concerns the city had at the time was the lack of a bridge for people walking and biking across Bottineau Boulevard at Bass Lake Road. The project’s current iteration calls for building an interchange, where people walking and biking would only interact with traffic turning onto or off of Bottineau Boulevard.
Meanwhile, cities have successfully used the consent process to force changes to highway projects. In 2004, the city of Minneapolis voted to deny consent to MnDOT to rebuild Interstate 35W between 42nd and 66th Streets, and Highway 62 from Penn to Portland Avenues. They said MnDOT’s plans relied on freeway expansion instead of improving transit. The appeals board affirmed the city’s denial, and MnDOT changed their plans to build a bus station at 46th Street, which opened in 2010.
Technically, the Met Council does not need to seek municipal consent for bus rapid transit projects because such a process is not outlined in state statute. The Met Council nonetheless has heeded the wishes of cities that do not want to see bus rapid transit in their communities, such as White Bear Lake, which passed a resolution in 2022 opposing the project.
Parks departments don’t have an official say, so how do they get heard?
While cities are part of municipal consent, government entities that focus on managing parks, like the Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board, do not. Still, they have influence on the process assuming they’re engaged with the cities that do have an official say.
The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board on Aug. 7 voted 6-1 to oppose a Blue Line Extension route that crosses Victory and Theodore Wirth Parkways at grade; both parkways straddle the Minneapolis and Robbinsdale city limits, and both cities are taking note of the park board’s concerns.
Minneapolis City Council member LaTrisha Vetaw said at the July 9 Intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting that she would like to see the Blue Line Extension cross the parkways underground. During a phone interview, however, Park Board Commissioner Becka Thompson, who represents the area and drafted the park board’s letter, isn’t so sure, but agrees that the route should not cross the parkways at grade.
“If you put it underground, it’d be safe and it’d be great. But I get that literally adds a billion dollars to the price tag,” Thompson said during the phone interview. Both Thompson and Vetaw also want a proposed station there to be moved away from Lowry Avenue.
The Met Council previously proposed building a station on a viaduct, to be connected directly to a ramp that connects with North Memorial Hospital. The park board and North Memorial Hospital cried foul, which resulted in the Met Council proposing an at-grade option. But with the park board’s latest opposition, deputy general manager Nick Thompson says they plan to respond to the park board’s concerns as part of the environmental review process.
The Minneapolis park board also had concerns with the Southwest Light Rail extension crossing Cedar Lake Parkway. “This situation is very similar to what happened during the initial designs of the SWLRT through the Kenilworth channel. Except in that process, we took more of a lead role. For the Blue Line, we will be involved in the process, but not in a lead role,” spokesperson Robin Smothers said.
Meanwhile, the Three Rivers Park District was able to work with Hennepin County, the Met Council, and local cities to grade-separate the Cedar Lake Regional Trail at Belt Line Boulevard, Wooddale Avenue, and Blake Road as part of the Southwest Light Rail project. The trail reopened in July, the occasion marked by a 50-person bike ride led by Chair Charlie Zelle and project manager Jim Alexander earlier this month.
“They’ve had us at the table for both projects from the early days on and they’ve been good to work with, and the cities have been great partners on this. Those three streets have heavy road traffic, and the trail traffic was quite heavy before the LRT started. All parties agreed that, in the best interest of the trail users, to have great separated crossings,” said Jonathan Vlaming, associate superintendent of planning, design and technology at Three Rivers Park District.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct Dan Soler’s title.
