Katie Galloto in the Star Tribune reports: “St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter said he will ask the City Council to exempt newly constructed housing from the city’s rent control ordinance, adding to the flurry of questions surrounding the policy passed by voters last week. … After last week’s vote spurred some developers to say they’re pausing St. Paul projects, Deputy Mayor Jaime Tincher sent an e-mail to the City Council on Monday saying Carter would approve an amendment specifying that new housing construction isn’t subject to rent control.”
This from MPR, “Minnesota’s firmly back on the wrong track in the COVID-19 pandemic. The state on Monday posted its highest single-day count of new cases since December. Active cases also reached a 2021 high and the rate of tests coming back positive is edging higher. … the struggle continues to get more Minnesotans vaccinated. Wide gaps remain in the vaccination rates among regions and counties.”
Andy Mannix and Libor Jany write in the Star Tribune: “Eight years after a grand jury cleared police of wrongdoing, three Minneapolis officers who were on the scene of the fatal shooting of Terrance Franklin have retained attorneys and two of them are in talks with Hennepin County prosecutors over immunity from potential charges in exchange for new information about what happened that day, according to sources familiar with the case. Minneapolis police SWAT officers shot 22-year-old Franklin 10 times in the basement of a home in Uptown on May 10, 2013, including multiple times in the head.”
Frederick Melo writes in the Pioneer Press: “For months, a series of St. Paul property owners along West Seventh Street have complained to the city that a drop-in day center for the homeless has drawn open drug use, prostitution, unruly behavior and even public defecation. Business owners have now taken their case to court, even as the City Council prepares to allow more day shelters citywide. The owner of Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub and six other plaintiffs are suing the city of St. Paul and Freedom House, which operates a day shelter in an old city fire station, alleging violations of the city’s zoning regulations and the mayor’s emergency powers, as well as two claims of negligence and a claim of nuisance.”
At Bring Me The News, Melissa Turtinen reports: “The Minnesota DNR is in ‘urgent’ need of cones — and it’ll pay you for them. The DNR’s State Forest Nursery needs hundreds of bushels of cones over the next few months so it can meet its 2022 reforestation efforts. Specifically, the DNR is seeking black spruce, jack pine and red pine cones. The DNR pays people anywhere from $20 to $150 per bushel of cones, depending on the type.”
Josh Skluzachek reports for KSTP-TV: “The Departments at Dayton’s will reopen its building to the public on Nov. 18, The Dayton’s Project announced Monday. The Grand Opening will include 33 local makers installed just in time for the holiday season. … Dayton’s says it will unveil its Christmas window decorations on the skyway level and first floor on Nov. 18. The corner of Eighth Street and Nicollet Mall will feature a display of Santa Bears, a Dayton’s tradition.”
The story at KSTP-TV says, “A total of five Minnesota Vikings players are now on the COVID-19/Reserve list after two more players were added on Monday. Linebacker Ryan Connelly and practice squad tackle Timon Parris were added to the list on Monday, joining center Garrett Bradbury, practice squad guard Dakota Dozier and safety Harrison Smith.”
A CBS News story by Nancy Chen says: “A paramedic who was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse at a police brutality protest in August 2020 testified Monday about his tense confrontation with the teenager before taking a bullet in the arm. Jurors watched footage of the moment Rittenhouse shot Gaige Grosskreutz at close range with an AR-15 style weapon. ‘What was going through your mind at this particular instant?’ prosecutor Thomas Binger asked. ‘That I was going to die,’, Grosskreutz said. He said that he lost 90% of his bicep.”
So only new developments will be exempt from rent control? And the mayor and city council can just change this?
So the existing landlords get screwed?
I guess Orwell said it right, “some animals are more equal than others”.
You know there’s gonna be more to it than that.
You also know it’s gonna get challenged.
“Minnesota’s firmly back on the wrong track in the COVID-19 pandemic.”
But why? They keep reporting on this, but they don’t offer any explanation of why our numbers keep going up when we’re fairly well vaccinated. It seems like our “hot spot” status came out of nowhere. We were expecting it as a possibility once winter hit, but this trend started while we were still having nice weather and presumably people were not yet congregating in crowded indoor settings. What is Minnesota doing (wrong) that other, better positioned states are not doing?
I know there are a lot of people out there acting as if the pandemic is over, but that is almost certainly the case all over the country. What is different in Minnesota that is causing our numbers to keep going up?
I wish someone would ask Kris Ehresmann this question at one of the Department of Health briefings.
Pat,
The cases are increasing because the over-all vaccination rate is somewhat deceiving. We have high vaccination rates over-all but low rates and more risky behavior in the population that continues to get infected and sick, primarily outstate. Think of it this of this way… you can have a state-wide vaccination rate of 90% but if you’re in a room with 100 people and a 10% vaccination rate you’re going to get COVID 19 unless you wear a mask and get our there quickly. The number of unvaccinated people who are ignoring or rebelling against recommendations is large enough to fuel this new wave of infection and illness.
In addition to that, everything is now wide open without any mask mandates, so opportunities to acquire the virus have multiplied, at the same time fewer people are masking. This means that even vaccinated people are in scenarios wherein they can be exposed to sufficient new-variant viral doses to get infected.
Another huge problem we have that I haven’t seen discussed really at all is this bizarre assumption that testing is as effective at preventing transmission as vaccines. Walz and his people seem be deliberately promoting the fallacy that testing is some kind of effective substitute for vaccination… it is not even close. So what we’ve seen is steady and increasing testing with decreasing vaccination rates. Testing doesn’t prevent transmission, it just confirms it, and by the time people test positive they’ve often already spread the virus to others.
Finally, one of the most significant sources of transmission is children who are now full-on in classes and daycares without any mask mandates.
Walz appears to have decided that we’re going to document the pandemic now but do little if anything to actually stop it… so bam, it’s back. This was predictable months ago when the new variants emerged.
The states that are doing better than MN are still actively encouraging or mandating masks and vaccines, and have fewer and smaller pockets of unvaccinated people.
I think one of Walz’s biggest mistakes for instance has been to drop the pandemic into the laps of local school boards. This has created a crap storm of local hostility and put ordinary people on school boards in the position of making epidemiological judgments, the results have been chaotic and predictable but Walz can try to dodge the blame and wrath of parents so long as falls on the poor bastards who ended on school boards.
By the way, we don’t actually need “mandates” per say, Walz et al could simply issue clear and strong statewide recommendations… but he even refuse to that. School districts and employers could just say that they’re following recommendations, but Walz won’t even give them that much cover.
We need statistics on metro versus out-state infection rates.
Forgive me Mr. Udstrand, I’m from out of town. Did not the Republicans Gazelka and Haley inform Walz that the pandemic emergency and his special power were over? In July?
Defense attorney: “You were standing three to five feet away from him. It wasn’t until you advanced on him with your hands down pointing the gun at him that he fired, right?”
Grosskreutz: “Correct.”
Verdict: Self defense. If he’s pointing a gun at you, you don’t have to wait until he fires before you can defend yourself.
If they’d show all the trial footage Grosskreutz had a gun to the kid’s head.
Why not report all the news?
Get the National Guard ready, because that kid is going to get acquitted.
I don’t why you would write a summary about Carter requesting and exemption for new construction without mentioning the fact that the cities lawyers have already advised them that can’t do that. Why doesn’t Carter tell developers that he’ll work on procedures that can grant them a variance (already allowed by the ordinance) if they need them? Bang of the buck Carter is trying to rip rent control apart instead of working it in good faith.
The problem is that the ballot measure was so poorly written, who knows what the courts would do. The thing is so flawed, there is a good chance the courts will throw the whole thing out. The variance language is a joke. Its really a mess.
Carter is trying this direction because a case by case variance won’t solve the problem of getting new housing built. He’s trying to mitigate the harm rent control will cause the people it was supposed to help.