Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak remains confident that the seven City Council members who signed letters backing his stadium plan will cast the needed votes later this month to accept the final Vikings stadium deal.

 That early show of support was key to Minneapolis prevailing in the quest for the Vikings stadium at the Legislature, Rybak said Friday during an impromptu meeting with City Hall reporters.

 “They gave us the authority to go to the Legislature with a very tough set of requirements and every single one of those wound up in the legislation.”

Details about exactly when the Minneapolis City Council will vote to accept or reject the proposed Vikings Stadium are still undecided.  The May 25 date, the next regularly scheduled council meeting, might not work because at least two council members, one on each side of the issue, will be out of town.

The council has 30 days to vote following Gov. Mark Dayton’s signing of the stadium bill. If need be, Rybak has the authority to call the council into special session to beat the 30-day deadline.

Here are edited excerpts from his morning comments to reporters:

Q. How hard was it to push this project to completion?

A. This was definitely a lot of work. [Laughs] I’ve never been involved in taking something of this scale from beginning to the end in the Legislature and in this body [the City Council].

In fact, there’s almost no precedent for it.  There’s never been a time when we’ve built two major projects [the stadium and the Target Center renovation] — two huge public arena projects — in the city all at once.

This required us to build a statewide coalition of Republicans and Democrats, of getting labor and business together, mobilizing fans and going out into our community and having forums to solicit opinions.

“This was definitely one of the hardest things I’ve done but, frankly, I really enjoyed this … first, because we came out with a great result, and second, we built some great partnerships that long term will have a lot of upside for the city.

“For better or worse, Minneapolis has not had a great reputation at the Legislature. For most of the first years I was here, I was fighting the idea that Minneapolis was fiscally mismanaged.  Now we’ve been able to make the case successfully that, frankly, we’re dramatically better managed than the state.

This helped demonstrate that the city can lead on big projects. The incredibly gutsy move that seven council members made to put their names on the line and be the first in the state [to vote] allowed us to go to the Legislature in a position of strength.

In the past, on this and many other issues, we’ve been kicked around a lot at the Legislature, but by taking the lead here, we were able to demand a lot and get every single thing we asked for and more.

That says a lot about this project but it also … re-positions this city as the leader in the state. That, I think, is going to have positive implications long term on a lot of things.

Q. Earlier, you told me you were not thinking about letting this project sit at the Legislature until next year.

A. There was no Plan B. [Laughs]

Q. You said you would rather have your toenails pulled out…

A. … than go back to the Legislature and talk about the Vikings stadium for another year?  Exactly. I just needed you to know how much I didn’t want to do that.

Q. Have you thought about who you might appoint to the new Stadium Authority? [The mayor has three appointments, and the governor has three appointments.]

A. That’s part of what we were doing this morning. I don’t mean to dodge you, but I have a big white board where we’re putting down all of these questions.

We’re doing three huge construction projects: the Vikings Stadium; the renovation of Target Center and the five-year plan to construct 100 green homes in North Minneapolis that I mentioned in my State of the City address. All three of these projects are coming together, so we’re mapping out how we can get that done.

We definitely have the capacity to do it. It’s just going to require focus. If anybody thought I was going to be sitting around for the last couple of years of this term, we’re going to be doing a ton of work.

Q. The state got an extra $50 million out of the Vikings.Does the city get any of that?

A. The state had negotiated a clawback, which meant if there was a profit made on the sale of the team, they would get some of the proceeds.

When the Wilfs came in and made the [$50 million] contribution, we said we wanted a piece of that, too, so we get a portion of that clawback. So if the team is sold for a profit, the city will get part of those proceeds. It could be anywhere from zero to multi-millions of dollars.

We also got an expansion of the sales tax. Now there will be, for the first time, Vikings ticket-holders paying a tax to the City of Minneapolis. So will pro-soccer ticket-holders.

Q. How does it feel to be successful?

A. I was convinced from the beginning that this was going to be a very controversial project but that when people began to understand the details, they would understand the benefits. And that has been our experience from the beginning.

This was very controversial. There were a lot of media reports that rightly said Rybak and [City Council President Barb] Johnson are standing alone. But we knew it would get better, and it did.

People began to dissect this, and they began to understand that this was also about, not just a place for the Vikings, but a stadium that could have lots of public uses. It was about Target Center. It was about property tax relief. It was about a huge influx into the hospitality industry that is so critical to us.

So people began to understand that, but it remains very controversial, and I understand that. I also believe that this is going to be marked as a time where the city took control of something.  In the past, too often, we’ve sat on the sidelines.

By taking control of this issue, we changed the situation where there may have been a Vikings stadium built in the city to one in which we got the Vikings stadium, professional soccer, the [$135 million] Target Center renovation, we got solid Convention Center funding.

Even those who don’t like the Vikings stadium, we hope, will see a situation where we turned a lemon into lemonade.

For those who love the idea of a billion-dollar investment in the city, this is going to be an amazing time in which we’re building two huge projects, one on either end of downtown.

This is making a huge investment in the hospitality industry that’s got a billion-dollar payroll.

I don’t expect everybody to love that out of the chute, because these are very controversial issues, but the bottom line is we solved one of the longest problems in the State of Minnesota by the way the city finally stepped up and became a leader and getting a lot in return.

Q. There are people who don’t like the stadium and don’t like the fact that the charter requirement for a referendum is being bypassed.

A. We didn’t bypass the charter. The charter argument is based on the idea that somehow the city has had any control over the hospitality tax dollars. I’ve sat in that room, at my conference table, for 10 years trying to think of any way humanly possible to get those dollars used for higher priorities, like putting more cops and firefighters on the streets and lowering the property tax.

The law didn’t allow us to use that money. We have had no control of those dollars.

Q. Where will you be the next time a Minneapolis mayor has to build a stadium?

A. The good news is that the next mayor of Minneapolis who has to build a sports facility will be the one who puts my ashes inside the new one. We’re not building another one in my lifetime.

Two Cities blog, which covers Minneapolis and St. Paul City Halls, is made possible in part by grants from The Saint Paul Foundation and the Carolyn Foundation.