The new Minneapolis City Council has been in office for almost a year.
After a rocky start that felt like a bunch of free spirits doing their own thing, the Council is getting its sea legs and easing into the future with relative cohesion.
Council member and Ways and Means Committee Chair John Quincy and I had a few minutes to download in the Skyway the other day. We chatted about how the state's largest municipality is faring in an emerging era of plenty following a decade of economic stagnation.
His views as an inside player squared with mine as an outside observer.
Quincy said the new members score points for hard work and getting grooved on "governance", as opposed to just advocacy, which is a role some of the newbies held prior to elective office. There is an important distinction.
The City has over a billion dollars in development as the improving economy continues to bring new projects that bear the fruits of revenue and jobs. We're just getting into the 4th quarter of the fiscal year and another billion in private investment in the City is visible on the horizon.
That is a nice place to be, but our new Council has so much to consider.
Reflecting the environmental activism of municipalities around the world is a key to long-term success. World-class cities are learning to integrate climate change policies with locally originated solutions that create jobs and save money. It is both a public safety and economic imperative. On renewable energy our Council could make a global impact and not spend a nickel of tax dollars doing it.
There are other Council issues positioned in front of the environmental backdrop—improving core services without raising already high property taxes; 100-year decisions on transit, development and population patterns; and collaborations with business and other units of government to attack social ills the City alone is unequipped to handle.
I think we have a chance to cultivate the best City Council in a generation.
There is abundant, even gifted, talent among the new members. Just as critically, though, the veteran members provide institutional wisdom and the perspective of history to keep the city's urban agenda real.
That kind of balance is fortuitous.
With this tasty mixture of idealism and pragmatism; history and the future; local empowerment and internationalism, our leaders have a chance to become the most impactful in our City's modern times.
Hewing to a sustainability agenda—economic, social and environmental---will guarantee it.
