Monthly Archives: April 2016

General

Met Council Reform Principles

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Last week five members of the Crystal City Council signed a joint letter expressing our support for a statement of principles for reform of the Metropolitan Council.  In doing so, we joined a coalition of local elected officials from 35 cities and 4 counties who have adopted these same principles.

The Met Council was established in 1967 to provide regional planning services for the twin cities area- originally focused on transit and wastewater treatment.  As years went on, the Council’s scope has grown, but it’s accountability has not.

The Twin Cites is not unique in having a regional planning authority. We are, however, unique in the way our regional planning authority is organized and funded.

The Met Council has an annual budget of over $900,000,000 – larger than the regional planning authorities of Houston, Dallas, Chicago, Los Angeles and 13 other larger metro areas – combined!  $80 million of the Met Council’s budget comes from an annual tax levy. That figure makes the Met Council’s tax levy the third largest levy in Minnesota- and more than 8 times Crystal’s levy.

The Met Council has the largest budget of any regional planning authority (by far) and is the only regional planning authority in the United States that has direct taxing authority.

Despite these facts, the Met Council is also the only regional planning authority that contains no elected officials- instead all members of the Met Council are appointed by, and serve at the pleasure of, the Governor.

The principles of reform being supported by the coalition of local governments are not seeking to eliminate the Council, but rather seek some common sense reforms to make the Met Council more accountable, responsive and credible to its primary constituents- the cities and counties it serves.

Among the changes being sought are staggered terms for Council Members, changing the makeup of the Council to include a majority of elected officials, ensuring that representation is population based, and incorporating a system of checks and balances on the Council’s activities.

The principles of reform supported in the letter are:

  1. A majority of the members of the Metropolitan Council shall be elected officials, appointed from cities and counties within the region.
  2. Metropolitan cities shall directly control the appointment process for city representatives to the Metropolitan Council.
  3.  Metropolitan counties shall directly appoint their own representatives to the Metropolitan Council.
  4. The terms of office for any Metropolitan Council members appointed by the Governor shall be staggered and not coterminous with the Governor.
  5. Membership on the Metropolitan Council shall include representation from every metropolitan county government.
  6. The Metropolitan Council shall represent the entire region, therefore voting shall be structured based on population and incorporate a system of checks and balances.

Links:

Note:

The Crystal City Council originally debated passing a statement of support for these principles as a council resolution. However, the rules adopted by the council prohibit resolutions of this type, and ultimately it was decided not to pursue a formal resolution. All council members were given the opportunity to sign the letter.

Crystal City Council Meeting Recap

City Meetings Update – March 2016

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I’ll just skip the part where I make excuses for why I haven’t written lately and just get on with the update for March.

The city council typically has two meetings per month, but we had to move our first meeting in March due to precinct caucuses (state law doesn’t allow council meetings on caucus night) so we had meetings on February 29 and March 15.

Council Meeting Highlights

Appearances – Police Chief Revering gave an award to a mother and son (Jennifer Auger and Cameron Auger-Pippi) who called the police on some suspicious activity and ended up preventing a domestic violence situation.

Commissions – We appointed a bunch of commissioners to city commissions as part of the annual reappointment process.  Work continues on refining the process for recruiting, selecting and appointing commissioners to ensure maximum success.

Donations – The city made donations to the NEAR and PRISIM food shelves. The money used to make the donations was raised by Crystal council members and commissioners who volunteered to bag groceries at Cub Foods in 2015.

Light Rail – This topic has been talked about quite a bit. We passed a resolution that did not affirm or deny municipal consent for the Blue Line Extension.  Read more here.

Public Works Equipment and Projects – We approved a number of new items for public works, including a new sewer camera system, a box plow attachment, and a some new sewer pumps (yay!).  All of these were items that were in the budget for the year.  We also approved this year’s sewer relining project and the next steps in this year’s street and alley reconstruction projects.

One exciting thing we did this year is purchased some equipment and shared the cost with Robbinsdale. This will help both cities save cost while giving us both access to equipment we need.  This was a great, creative solution brought forth by our public works department.

Work Session Highlights

Police Annual Report – We reviewed the PD’s annual report, which is now online for you to review as well.

Local Board of Appeal and Equalization – We reviewed the local board of appeal and equalization, which is a fancy way of saying we talked with the assessors from the county to refresh ourselves on the process for appealing tax valuations.  Much more on this to come.

36th and Regent Study – A few years ago, the council looked at options for “enhancing” (or some may say “correcting”) the traffic situation at 36th and Regent.  One option that was proposed was a mini-roundabout.  The council didn’t take that option off the table, but we also didn’t love it.  I’ll be door-knocking that neighborhood with a proposed drawing to see how residents in the area feel about the idea.

Street Maintenance Fund – We are currently in phase 15 of a 16 phase project to reconstruct every street in Crystal.  Once that ends, we will enter a maintenance mode, to ensure that we maintain the roads we rebuilt.  The council had the first of what will be many conversations about how to approach maintenance going forward, with an eye toward eliminating special assessments for maintenance.

In the Community

There were quite a few charity bowling tournaments in the past few weeks- The Light of Crystal, Beyond the Yellow Ribbon, and bowling for Rocco the police K9.  I bought a bowling ball.  The picture is from the Rocco event.

On March 19, the Crystal Council joined West Metro Fire and bagged groceries for tips during the Firefighters Fighting Hunger drive. Pictures here.

Links and Info

While my blog posting has been light, I’ve been getting better at Facebook, so you can keep up with me there, if you are so inclined.

You can watch the video of council meetings here and find the agendas and meeting notes here.  Audio recording of work sessions can be found here. Check the city calendar for updated meeting dates, locations and times.

As always, if I can be of assistance, let me know.