Developers Still Building Parking; Whittier Alliance Still Terrible

image: flickr

Sixty-four units of affordable "workforce" housing are coming to the Whittier neighborhood. This is good for Whittier, and Minneapolis as a whole, which has a need for affordable housing. The project will have plenty of parking, which is disappointing, but not surprising (I once made a bold prediction that we hadn't seen the end of off-street parking in Minneapolis).

Analysis of Minneapolis City Council 2014 Fundraising

There's still 846 days until the 2017 election, but Minneapolis City Council Members are already out there raising money. I have combed through 2014's campaign finance reports to assess how each of them is doing on the financial road to 2017.

Progress on Parking: A Channel 79 EXCLUSIVE

"We're hearing unconfirmed reports that the City Council has banned cars."
image credit: Omar Bárcena

Minneapolis is one City Council vote away from enacting a major, nationally-heralded parking reform authored by Council Member Lisa Bender. I've watched with great interest as the debate has unfolded on Channel 79. To summarize the back-and-forth as uncharitably as possible: utopians on bicycles deployed a slew of crowd-pleasing parking analogies* (1, 2), while some of our city's original inhabitants countered with predictions of the aparkolypse (it's a "boondoggle" of an "epic fail"). 

Constituent Emails

You may remember the agitated gentleman from a few months ago who emailed me a PDF of my own Tweets. Now that I'm an elected public official, I have set up an email filter to clear my inbox of all messages not containing the phrase "you're a hero" (I will still be accepting your vitriol via Tweet, however).

29th Street: Interpreting the Open Streets Experience

View from the LHENA tent at Open Streets on Lyndale Ave.

It's been an interesting first two months on the job as a LHENA Board Member. Many blog posts have gone unwritten, while others have been drafted only to remain unpublished. Some observers have speculated that I'm saving material for a political autobiography (rumored title: Eyewitness to Power: God, Guns, Grits, Gravy, and Screenshots).

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.