Environment
Your very specific Twin Cities recycling questions, answered
Post-It notes? Lawn signs? Bottle caps of all kinds? Your guide to recycling’s edge cases.
Economy
Metro
As Minneapolis minimum wage ticks up, city prepares to address more violations
Up to this point, the law hasn’t impacted many employers in Minneapolis, since most already paid rates above the law’s pre-2019 requirements. That changes July 1.
Economy
Can Minnesota save its dairy farms?
More than 1,100 Minnesota dairy farms closed up between 2012 and 2017, leaving only about 3,600 farms
Twin Cities Business
What’s behind the epidemic of broken escalators in downtown Minneapolis?
Escalators are an ongoing headache for property owners says Mike Salmen, managing principal of the Twin Cities office of Transwestern. “They’re frequently out of commission,” he says. On the other hand, “stairs don’t usually break.”
Economic Vitality in Greater Minnesota
For Minnesota cities and counties, the 2019 increase in state aid was long awaited
International Falls will get an increase of $153,000, which it uses it for essential services like paying police officers and funding the public works department. In Mower County, an increase of about $255,000 will go into the county’s general fund.
Metro
Millennials get all the credit for embracing city living. But the trend started with Generation X
Boomers tended to show a preference for suburbs as they approached their 30s. Not so for subsequent generations.
National
Why Minnesotans — in Congress and out — were so disappointed with Trump’s decision to restrict travel to Cuba
Minnesota lawmakers and other advocates for a more open relationship with the island say the Trump administration’s approach moves Cuba policy backwards.
Metro
In the Twin Cities, men bike to work at twice the rate women do. That’s actually better than a lot of U.S. cities
Cycling gender gaps are attributed, variously, to notions that women don’t feel as safe biking in traffic or being exposed on the street as men; are expected to adhere to a higher standard of put-togetherness at work; or are more often responsible for shuttling kids around, which makes biking more difficult.
New Americans in Greater Minnesota
All in: When Jason Chavez-Cruz went to college in Duluth, his family followed
Chavez-Cruz, a first-generation American, left the Twin Cities for the College of St. Scholastica. As a Latino, he felt different in Duluth and missed his extended family, but soon five of his siblings and cousins took the leap as well.
MNopedia
During the 1939 WPA strike in Minneapolis, things got violent
Minnesota was the only state in which strikers faced criminal charges for preventing people from working.
Economic Vitality in Greater Minnesota
Healthy competition: Why Greater Minnesota cities are investing in sports and recreation
Willmar and other Minnesota towns want to attract professionals, young families and others who might be looking for an alternative to the suburbs.
Politics & Policy
In Washington and St. Paul, progress on rural broadband internet is slow, spotty
Both parties in both capitals claim to be for rural broadband development. That doesn’t mean the problem’s getting solved quickly.
Economy
Losing the Amazon HQ bid may have been very good for Minnesota’s fiscal health
A study looking at tax incentives for businesses in 32 states found they rarely paid off, and usually made the states’ financial situations worse.
