After heated meetings that exposed Minneapolis residents’ opposition to the city’s goal of asserting greater control over neighborhood associations this spring, city staff told Minneapolis City Council members Monday that they need more time to research the city’s current relationship with the organizations before making any changes.
David Rubedor, director of Minneapolis’ Neighborhood and Community Relations (NCR), told the council’s Public Health, Environment, Civil Rights, and Engagement Committee that his team will miss an original deadline of Oct. 28 to come up with specifics for Neighborhoods 2020, the new program that aims to diversify the Minneapolis’ 70 neighborhood associations, which receive funding from the city. In May, the council approved a preliminary framework for the initiative without any details about how the city should leverage those dollars to accomplish that goal.
“Now we’ve had a chance to kind of rest on this a little bit,” Rubedor said.
The project has moved more slowly than the city originally expected. Rubedor released recommendations for Neighborhoods 2020 in January, with the intention of establishing a new program by the end of 2019, when the mechanism that funds the groups, a tax district, dries up. NCR saw the expiring funding plan as a prime time for changing the city’s relationship with neighborhood groups and establishing new rules for leadership. Historically, white homeowners have made up a disproportionate amount of neighborhood association board members, despite the city’s racial diversity and the fact that most residents are renters.
But from the start, neighborhood leaders citywide have criticized the city’s approach, arguing that it’s a misguided attempt to diversify neighborhood leadership that could force some of the groups to combine or shut down completely.
[image_caption]David Rubedor[/image_caption]
Supporters of the plan said the approval was needed to provide legal groundwork for the city to fund neighborhood groups next year, even though the Neighborhoods 2020 plan is not done. In August, as part of his 2020 budget plan, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey proposed keeping funding for the groups at existing levels over the next five years by dipping into the city’s general fund rather than relying on tax increment financing.
“What happened in May was a lot of conversation, a lot of anxiety about how neighborhoods were going to be funded, where they were going to get their money from, and at the same time we were trying to talk about changes in programming,” Rubedor said Monday. “We have answered, in essence, that funding question. We can now, I think, really focus on the programming without the kind of the backdrop of wondering where the money’s going.”
Consultants selected
Since the framework’s approval in May, NCR staff has reviewed six applications for the consultant position and interviewed two finalists. In the end, the city selected researchers within the University of Minnesota’s Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) to help them, and Rubedor said the hiring process is among the reasons for the new timeline for Neighborhoods 2020.
Beginning this month, five researchers within CURA will start surveying members of neighborhood associations to learn about their challenges. They also plan to reach out to residents who aren’t involved in the groups to hear why they are not participating and what they want from neighborhood leadership.
The researchers are planning to dive deep into city budgets over the past decades to determine whether the city has favored groups in more affluent neighborhoods than those with more economic and racial diversity. The academics are calling the entire research project a Racial Equity Analysis, and they plan to release their findings in November.
[image_caption]C. Terrence Anderson[/image_caption]
In addition to the partnership with U of M researchers, NCR is reshaping its internal staff exploring how the city should administer Neighborhoods 2020 so that groups maintain autonomy. Rubedor said it’s too soon to say whether neighborhood groups’ annual municipal funding will be part of the new accountability measures.
“If a neighborhood is not a good performer, what are we going to do in order to help either get that to change or what do we do about it?” Rubedor said. “The approach is intended to be much more supportive in helping identify where neighborhoods need assistance.”
What’s to come
Under the new timeline, the city is planning to release a draft of the new rules and accountability metrics in January. Then, they say they’ll oversee a 45-day public comment period and bring back revised guidelines for Neighborhoods 2020 in March, with the hopes of receiving final council approval in April — or before city departments submit their budget requests for 2021.
[image_caption]Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins[/image_caption]
At the council committee meeting Monday, Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins emphasized concerns from neighborhood leaders who question the groups’ changing relationship to the city, while Council Member Cam Gordon said he appreciated seeing an adjusted time window and a team of researchers ready to flesh out next steps.
Meanwhile, Council Member Phillipe Cunningham, who was among the five council members who voted against passing the preliminary framework in May, highlighted the work ahead. “We want to make sure that we … reflect the shifting demographics of our city,” he said. “It was a challenging conversation [this spring] … and I think what we really pulled out of that is how do we do this work in a new, collaborative, thoughtful way.”
Jessica –
Thank you very much for reporting on issues of great concern to neighborhood residents and their organizations. Your reporting is especially appreciated because the issues being examined are not well known to most residents of Minneapolis, although their lives are affected by them to varying degrees.
NCR director Rebudor indicates CURA’s proposal will be available to the public within a week, something that should have been done before CURA and the other finalist consulting proposal were reviewed by NCR. There also is a question about whether CURA should even be eligible for the contract given the guidelines of the City’s Target Market Program with which it was selected.
I hope you will continue your reporting because it can answer questions about whether the City and its residents and their organizations can, as Council member Cunningham hopes, collaborate. This is most likely when those working for a common purpose practice mutual respect, mutual learning, and mutual accountability for results while sharing decision-making power.
Typo corrected – Rubedor not Rebudor. MinnPost should have an edit option for this purpose. Please correct it if you can.
Sharing power with undemocratic and unrepresentative neighborhood groups? I sure hope not. Time to de-fund these organizations altogether.
Historically in 1970-1990’s Cedar Riverside, the neighborhood group was controlled by renters–a specific, non-diverse group of them–and used as one leg of a three-legged political stool to support a series of redevelopment projects to the ideological satisfaction and material benefit of that group of renters, the political benefit of three Council Members, and the financial benefit of one developer who had just previously headed the City’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority
How things seem too have changed. Now the Mayor and one Council Member want to do a major neighborhood-altering development–the proposed African Mall–opposed by the neighborhood group and an apparent majority of neighborhood residents, businesses and property owners. Opponents of the project, which suddenly appeared out of nowhere–no neighborhood preparation or input at all–had to express their opinion at the first public meeting on the mandated project by, in effect, shouting down the Council Member and Mayor who were forced to cancel the meeting. The Council Member who continues to claim that “the community” supports the project, sent out a communique stating that the meeting was a success!
Diversity is not the present issue in this neighborhood, it’s whether the City cares in the least about our wishes and needs. Have things really changed after all?
Nothing more pathetic than a loud minority shouting down people they disagree with. I expect the real meaning of that is that the neighborhood overwhelmingly supports the project being pushed by the mayor and councilmember they elected.
The following quote pretty much says it all: ” five researchers within CURA will start surveying members of neighborhood associations to learn about their challenges” No input from the actual community residents, some call them Tax payers, from this perspective the local neighbor hood organization’ s continue to drift into, its all about the money, and the community is way, way down the list, if there at all. NCR appears to follow the same strategy, all about money, not accountability, As the article mentions multiple times, its all about funding, not a word said about, what are you going to do with the funding, what does the community get gain? Zero accountability, Just burn up those tax dollars,
“Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey proposed keeping funding for the groups at existing levels over the next five years” seems the Mayor has little interest in getting any ROI on these tax $ either! .
Regarding CURA researchers: “They also plan to reach out to residents who aren’t involved in the groups to hear why they are not participating and what they want from neighborhood leadership.”
Don’t change the name. F-L is still a worthy aspiration embracing the notion of coalition politics. It’s certainly more legit than a party which calls itself ‘republican’ but has come to love authoritarian — almost royalist — reactionary politics and is, ironically, today’s parallel to a major political party containing elements aligning itself with undemocratic Russian rulers. The difference is the DFL weeded them out while the Republicans nominate them for high office.
Uffda! previous comment should be posted with the story by Peter Callaghan 09/18/2019 on 75th anniversary of DFL.
thanks –Roy Everson
About once every 16 years, the pendulum swings from advice from impacted citizens given face-to-face to the Mayor, a Council Committee, or a Council Member to an “input process” moderated by city staff. The former deals better with long- term city planning and ordinances; the latter focuses on feedback or reaction to policies and their implementation.
Each swing seems to lead to hiring more staff and accepting less help from volunteers.. Neither way makes staff work as objective, apolitical or impartial as advertised. Either way, newly elected Mayors and Council members are briefed by staff and read reports that omit emotion, fervor, desperation or fear and minutes that reflect the wipriters’ sense of decorum.
City government policy-making is too emotionally hard on ordinary people to be left to accountants, consultants, managers, analysts, engineers, planners, …..
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