Draft of LHE Historic District Study

We have obtained a draft of the Lowry Hill East Residential Historic District designation study. Is your house "contributing" or "non-contributing"? It's time to start judging your neighbors.

The Linden Hills Model

(This is a followup to my previous post)

Aside from a few highly restrictive organizations, becoming a candidate for a leadership position in most Minneapolis neighborhoods couldn't be easier (as my own biggest fan, I recently had the pleasure of nominating myself). Voting, however, is unnecessarily burdensome.

In Lowry Hill East, which has a fairly typical process, the election happens around 8 p.m. Nominations are followed by speeches. Then ballots are filled and submitted over the next few minutes. If you can't be present during those few minutes on that particular day, for whatever reason, you don't get to vote. And don't forget your ID, because you'll be asked for it.

Political Participation Rates in Lowry Hill East

There's been a lot of recent discussion about who leads Minneapolis' neighborhood organizations. As in, are they diverse enough? This is an important question. But we should also be asking who and how many are voting for those leaders. We don't have an answer for the who (I would advocate for a simple demographic survey for annual meeting attendees). But, in a first-of-its-kind analysis of never-before-cared-about numbers, we can finally tell you how many.

Minneapolis election data available here.