After beating Ward 3 incumbent Steve Fletcher by 9%, Michael Rainville explained how his background and leadership style will help him “heal” Minneapolis and support economic mobility.

Why did you choose to run this year?

“I can help heal this divide we have in our city. The murder of George Floyd was horrible. As a human being, when you see that video it just makes you cry. And we can never let that happen again and we can never let all those immigrant businesses burn to the ground again.”

How do you plan to do that?

“I’ve already started setting up mechanisms to have some task forces to give me input on public safety and housing. I’m very interested in not only affordable housing but housing the unsheltered … I’ve had two sessions with the management of the Avivo Village organization, which needs four more villages to house a total of 5,100 people in tiny homes. I will make the addition of these villages a goal of my governance.”

What is your plan for addressing public safety issues in Minneapolis?

“The city wants a police department – but they want a good police department. They don’t want one that kills us or treats us with disrespect, so that’s a very big issue … I get along great with the mayor and his point is well-taken. You don’t need a formal charter amendment to create a Department of Public Safety. Another thing this city council didn’t understand was you have to involve the Fire Department much more in public safety.”

How will your style of leadership differ from that of your predecessor?

“It’s going to be very different because I’ve lived here all my life and the last council member moved here to run for the office, and that really isn’t a good background. I’m from here, I’ve worked here and I’m collaborative and a great listener … Sure I’m in charge of city-wide issues, but a city council member’s number one job is to be the voice of their voters.”

What is your biggest goal for your first year serving as a council member?

“What I’ve done during my career is learned to multitask and to do a lot of things at once. And clearly, to calm the city down to heal is the goal. And how you do that is job creation, housing and just creating the hope that all people who live here have an opportunity, whether you’re a new immigrant or you’ve lived here through multiple generations of family. We all have to have the opportunity to prosper.”

How are you going to make sure the voices of traditionally underrepresented communities are heard?

“I can never speak for the Black community, but I can listen to them, I can be their friends and ask for advice. And the same way with students. I’ll never be young again, but I listen to them and I’m accessible.”

How are you feeling about your win?

“Well, it feels good, of course. And what feels good is that I won by a significant margin. I have the confidence of the voters.”

Were you surprised by the results?

“No. I’ve lived here all my life, right in this area. I went to DeLaSalle High School, and later St. Thomas and Notre Dame. I worked for 35 years for the Minneapolis Convention and Visitors Association … I’ve done a lot in this community and because of my job I know how the government works.”

Minneapolis resident Vanessa del Campo received an eviction notice four years ago when she and her neighbors asked their landlord to take better care of their apartment. She said the building was infested with cockroaches and rats, the stove and refrigerator did not work and the carpets had deteriorated.

“Since we asked for repairs, the landlord said, ‘You have to leave,’” del Campo told the Minnesota Daily in Spanish, translated by Magdalena Kaluza with Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (United Renters for Justice). “To go from my home to the courtroom was extremely terrifying.”

Del Campo was able to get a free lawyer through Legal Aid, a non-profit organization that has provided legal representation for “Minnesota’s most vulnerable citizens” for over 100 years, according to its website. She said she “trusted and believed in” the lawyer that was appointed to her.

Del Campo said if she had not had legal representation, “they would’ve taken away my home because the landlord had unlimited resources to make their case … My experience would’ve been a lot more terrifying because I would’ve been all alone.”

Instead, del Campo and her neighbors were able to buy the apartment building and they still live there today.

What does the “right to counsel” ordinance mean for renters?

The Minneapolis City Council unanimously approved the right to counsel ordinance on Oct. 8. It guarantees legal representation for low-income tenants served with eviction and aims to ease the end to the eviction moratorium, according to the city’s website.

Renters who have applied for rental assistance can not be evicted, but as of Oct. 12, landlords can file eviction notices for any other tenants who have not paid rent. Residents qualify if they make less than double the federal poverty threshold. For a single person that is less than $25,760 per year, but for a family of four is less than $53,000.

Ward 2 Council member Cam Gordon said about 3,000 people are evicted each year in Minneapolis. Legal Aid, which Gordon said worked with the city to design the ordinance, found widespread legal representation has the power to bring that number down.

The organization’s 2018 study found that fully-represented tenants win their eviction cases 96% of the time, while those without legal services win only 62% of the time.

Minnesota non-profit HOME Line provides free legal advice over the phone to help tenants know their rights. HOME Line Housing Attorney and Research Director Samuel Spaid said he received an increased amount of calls from renters as the eviction moratorium phased out.

Spaid said the court system moves quickly on evictions, making the preparation process harder on unrepresented renters. While landlords are required to give an eviction notice 14 days before filing official eviction paperwork, he said renters are sometimes only served a week before they have to go to court and defend themselves.

“Often tenants do a good job figuring that information out, but it’s really tough to do that in such a short time when you have everything else going on in your life,” Spaid said.

Student renters need housing assistance too.

University of Minnesota students who pay the Student Service Fee are provided free legal representation for housing issues through Student Legal Service (SLS). William Dane, a housing attorney who has been with SLS for 37 years, said graduate students are most likely to take advantage of the new ordinance because they are less likely to pay the optional student fee.

Dane said SLS only sees about a dozen eviction cases each year because of the nature of campus housing.

“There’s really not a lot of incentive for landlords to want to evict,” Dane said. He said they usually are willing to work with the student and SLS to negotiate and determine an alternative path forward.

However, Dane said the pandemic led to more housing issues for students as they struggled to be released from their leases. He said over half of all cases within SLS relate to housing issues, while before the pandemic, they only made up about 40%.

Minneapolis United for Rent Control organizer Ginger Jentzen said involving students in stronger renter protections is “incredibly crucial.”

“Students will stick around in Minneapolis for years to come. It’s not just the four years that you might be at the University,” Jentzen said. “It can actually have a big impact on the city as a whole and particularly on students who are facing mounting debt.”

During city elections Nov. 2, Minneapolis voters can rank their top three favorite candidates, increasing their power in the election process.

How it works

Ranked choice voting (RCV) is different from the traditional plurality system in that residents can vote for candidates in order of preference, with three columns on the ballot for their first, second and third choice. Candidates for all offices cannot win their race unless they get at least 51% of the votes.

If no candidate achieves a majority right away, election officials proceed to ranked choice voting tabulation, viewing all of the first-choice candidates and eliminating the one who received the smallest number of votes. For the voters whose first-choice candidate was eliminated, their votes will count for their second-choice candidate.
This process will change the percentage of votes for candidates, and if one candidate then has at least 51% of the votes, they will be declared the winner. If not, tabulation will be repeated until one candidate gets that majority.

Minneapolis elections administrator Aaron Grossman said choosing candidates for the second and third choice columns is optional, but recommended for voters who want to have a say in who is elected if their top choice candidates are eliminated.

Grossman said he expects that tabulation will occur this year, due in part to the large number of candidates who run for positions like mayor and Council member.

In 2017, there were 15 candidates for mayor and it took five rounds of tabulation before a winner was declared, Grossman said. This year, there are 17 candidates.

Voters will be able to follow election results on the Secretary of State Steve Simon’s website Nov. 2. You can download an example RCV ballot and see instructions on how to fill it out here.

Why ranked choice voting?

Minneapolis has been using the RCV system for municipal elections since 2006 for the offices of mayor, City Council, Parks and Recreation Board and Board of Estimation and Taxation, Grossman said. It is one of five cities in Minnesota that uses the system for its elections.

All municipal offices are on the ballot in odd-numbered years following a presidential election, every four years, Grossman said. An exception to this is that City Council members will be up for election in 2023 because Minneapolis is redistricting in 2022.

There can also be special elections in the case of a vacancy, which is how Ward Six Council member Jamal Osman was elected in 2020.

Cars lined up on Cedar Avenue honked at two people vandalizing the Imam Shafi’e mosque on Sept. 8 in broad daylight.

“I asked them, ‘Why are you spray painting the mosque?’ and they ran and threw the spray paint can,” neighbor Mohammed Abdi said. “I followed them and saw their car … Once I caught his license plate, he started covering his face, went in his car and drove away.”

The vandals appeared during the 7 p.m. daily prayer, which often is the busiest time at the mosque, according to community leader Abdirizak Bihi.

“They know that what they’re doing is wrong … and this one on Cedar Avenue was very daring,” Bihi said. “[It was] during the daytime, their faces were scary, they were intentional. We didn’t figure out what [the graffiti] stood for.”

As the anniversary of 9/11 approached, residents found graffiti on the walls of either Imam Shafi’e or Darul Quba mosques on almost a “daily basis,” Bihi said. Imam Shafi’e speaker Abdalaziz Mohamed said they have experienced a spike in vandalism during the weeks prior to Sept. 11, but leaders did not track how many times the buildings were defaced.

The American Civil Liberties Union tracked nationwide anti-mosque activity from 2005 to May 2021, finding 10 incidents in Minnesota since 2012. In November 2019, a vandal shattered a glass door of Salaam mosque in northeast Minneapolis, which is the most recent incident logged by the ACLU as anti-mosque activity.

Minneapolis Ward Six Council Member Jamal Osman said he spoke with mosque leaders and neighbors after the incident, though he said the graffiti did not contain any hateful or discriminatory messages.

“It’s not Islamophobia, it’s not targeted because of religious reasons,” Osman said. “These tags are any other problem Minneapolis has. They were not specifically targeting this neighborhood because it has a mosque.”

Imam Shafi’e speaker Mohamed said he is unsure if the incident was motivated by bias, but said other residents see it as a threat.

Impact on businesses

KJ Starr is the interim executive director of West Bank Business Association (WBBA) and her husband owns The Wienery. She said vandalism became more frequent during the protests following the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.

Starr said she believes that people found it easier to vandalize businesses when they closed due to the pandemic lockdown. Now that neighborhood businesses are back open, she said WBBA is able to work harder to prevent vandalism, though it is still more prominent than it was before the pandemic.

The Red Sea owner Russom Solomon said he also noticed more vandalism and graffiti within the last two years. He said that he put a mirror on the outside of his building to deter people from painting it.

“You have to have security watching your building to prevent this, it’s gotten so bad,” Solomon said. “It’s really sad.”

Starr said the cost of recovery depends on the extent of the damage. She said most graffiti can be painted over, but if a vandal uses acid-based paint, “you can’t do anything about that.”

She said recovering a building after windows or other parts have been destroyed is more expensive, but WBBA often helps businesses cover the costs. Either way, Solomon said dealing with vandalism is “a headache.”

“If you want to restore the original look of something, it requires a lot of money, a lot of effort, a lot of time,” Solomon said.

Painting solutions

After the daytime vandalism of Imam Shafi’e, Osman said mosque leaders told him they were open to putting art on the targeted wall of the building to prevent future graffiti.

Starr said painting a mural on a bare wall typically dissuades people from defacing it, as some nearby buildings have done. She said WBBA used the Minneapolis Facade Improvement grant to fund art in Cedar-Riverside following the vandalism in 2020, and this grant could be used to help the mosques.

However, Bihi said if vandals targeted the mosques purposefully, putting art on the wall might only draw unwanted attention. There are not currently any signs that identify the building as a mosque, and the presence of Islamic art could eliminate the mosque’s anonymity to people who do not live in the neighborhood.

For businesses, the University of Minnesota provides money through the Good Neighbor Fund that Starr calls “security art.” House of Balls artist Allen Christian said he will paint art on large aluminum sheets that cover and protect business windows as security screens.

“It’s about creating a safe space for these businesses, using material that does that but also allows light in, allows a sense of playfulness and allows the uniqueness of the business to come through,” Christian said.

Christian said he plans to focus on the project this winter, and his first client will be the Mediterranean Deli on Cedar Avenue. He said he expects each interested business’ screens to take about one month to create.

“If something bad happens to this community, it doesn’t really divide us, it actually brings us together,” Bihi said. “No matter what people do or say to threaten this community, we have neighbors who will have our back, and that’s something priceless.”

In an interview with the Minnesota Daily, Minneapolis mayoral candidate Kate Knuth sat down to discuss her run for office and what she hopes to accomplish if she wins. Some of Knuth’s top priorities include addressing climate change, reforming public safety and expanding affordable housing. 

Tell me about yourself.
“I have moved back and forth between science and public leadership in various ways. I am a former state representative. I built a lot of leadership programs here at the U, at the Institute on the Environment that worked with graduate students across the University. I was Chief Resilience Officer in Minneapolis, finished up my PhD a few years ago and have been building my own consulting company on climate policy and strategy. I also served on our state’s Environmental Quality Board for six years and I am currently on the Bryn Mawr Neighborhood Association Board.”

Why are you running for mayor?
“It comes from this deeply held value that a good life is lived in service of and in relationship with my community … My dad ran for the legislature when I was very young … and I did not like it when he ran because I was very shy … didn’t want to smile for pictures, didn’t want to be in parades, but the importance of serving our community really stuck with me.”

Why should Minneapolis citizens vote for you over the other candidates?
“I bring both a deep commitment to helping us navigate this moment and make real progress on racial justice, true public safety and the climate crisis, and I bring the relationship, the skill and the experience in having worked in multiple kinds of big bureaucracies to make them work better for what we need them to do. And I think that’s exactly what people are looking for in a mayor right now.”

How do you plan to change the city’s public safety system from what it is now?
“I think we need to take a more holistic approach. I support charter amendment two, which creates a new Department of Public Safety, and I’m also very clear that police are part of that department … I think we ask police to do too much that they’re not necessarily trained for, so we need to move to more kinds of responses like mental health or social workers, different kinds of crisis response. And we need real transparency and accountability in the police department.”

What are you specifically looking to do to address the climate crisis in Minneapolis?
“I’ve been working on climate change for pretty much my whole career, and I have never heard people as concerned as I have heard people now, and particularly young people … So I put forward a Minneapolis Green New Deal because I think people in Minneapolis are ready for a real, unabashed champion for climate justice in city hall. And we’ve done good work on climate, but we’re not reducing emissions fast enough and we have not taken on climate resilience and adaptation fully as a city. And what that means is we need to understand how different groups are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change and be intentional in how we’re investing in infrastructure, neighborhoods and parks, and building resilience to climate impacts that are already here.”

Are you planning to expand affordable housing in the city?
“We’re one of the tightest housing markets in the country right now, so we do need to invest more in all kinds of housing, and particularly more in affordable and deeply affordable housing. So that’s the foundation of my housing plan. I also support protections for renters. More than half of Minneapolis residents are renters now, and over 40% are cost burdened … so we do need, in addition to building more housing, to work on renter protections like rent stabilization, eviction protections, things like that.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length, grammar and clarity.

Mayor Jacob Frey proposed almost $192 million in spending on the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) for 2022, which is nearly a 15% increase from 2021.

The mayor announced his recommended budget, totalling about $1.6 billion, for the coming year on Aug. 13. There will be two public hearings on the budget on Dec. 1 and Dec. 8.

Council members will begin making amendments to the mayor’s proposal this month, which has to be finalized by mid-December.

Frey is up for reelection Nov. 2. If a different mayor is elected, they will be able to make amendments to the proposed budget until it is finalized by city council.

Police department

Within the police department, the money would go toward hiring 150 new police officers and changing programs within the department.

Along with the budget proposal, Frey announced MPD is ending police stops for low-level offenses, such as expired tags, starting Aug. 13. For Christopher Robertson, a sociology PhD student at the University of Minnesota who studies policing, race and health, this measure was encouraging.

“There’s been ample research showing racial disparities in terms of stops, searches and citations,” Robertson said. “I do think that the benefits may be felt in terms of having less of these encounters that potentially could lead to a lethal incident or events where individuals are violated or brutalized.”

Activists and city officials began advocating for this change after the police killing of Daunte Wright in April. Wright was pulled over because his car had expired tags and an air freshener hanging from the rearview mirror. Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter shot and killed him and is currently charged with first- and second-degree manslaughter.

The recommended budget also included a $500,000 new Early Intervention System (EIS). This software-based system aims to promote “officer accountability and positive officer interaction” as well as general wellness, according to the city’s website. The program collects employee data to identify “employee performance problems.” It is unclear from the proposal description what type of data and how it will be evaluated within EIS.

Mayoral candidate Sheila Nezhad said the current policing system often “coaches” problem officers rather than disciplining them, and only disciplinary records are public.

“This is a lot of money for a system that is not likely to give us the desired results, and in addition to the bad data, we need the ability to have follow-through,” Nezhad said.

MPD will be partly responsible for developing and monitoring the program. Ward Two council member Cam Gordon said he is skeptical because “they don’t have a good track record of sharing information or being open and transparent.” He said he would prefer more involvement by the Minneapolis Commission on Civil Rights or civilians.

Other public safety measures

In the “Civil Rights” section of the proposal, the mayor allocated about $107,000 toward hiring a Body Worn Camera Analyst. This person would work with the Office of Police Conduct Review to review and categorize all “relevant video” for investigators according to the program description.

Robertson assisted in conducting research of people in North Minneapolis in November 2020 to understand their experiences and perceptions of MPD. He said he does not think hiring a new body camera analyst will alleviate the concerns of many people because they do not trust officers to keep their body cameras on.

“The credibility of cameras among the community has been cut because if the people in charge aren’t being forthright about using cameras, it nullifies innovations,” Robertson said.

Frey recommended $7.8 million for the Office of Violence Prevention, which is a division in the Health Department formed in 2018. The department’s goal is to end violent crime in Minneapolis without relying on law enforcement.

The initiatives laid out in the program description include a mentorship program for youth at risk for being involved in violence and a hospital-based program that connects victims of violent injury to resources and support.

New Minnesota Future Together grants will cover tuition for students enrolling in high-need career programs at any tribal college or public institution in Minnesota starting in 2022.

Grants will be awarded to first-year undergraduate students automatically after they submit their financial aid documents, said Keith Hovis, Director of Communications for the Office of Higher Education (OHE). Awards will range from $100 to $15,400 and affect approximately 20,000 students.

Program eligibility

Governor Walz’s federal American Rescue Plan funds are covering the cost of the $35 million program, according to the OHE’s description of the program.

The program is expected to end in 2024, but the amount of time the funds are available will depend on the number of students who qualify for the grants.

Health care, STEM, business, industry and technology, education and public service are all considered “high-need areas,” according to the OHE.

In addition to standard eligibility requirements for OHE programs, specific Minnesota Future Together grants’ eligibility requirements depend on whether students have a Family Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) reported on FAFSA or State Aid Application of less than $100,000 or $50,000.

If students’ AGI is between $50,000 and $100,000, they must have worked in a critical industry listed at least part-time between March 1, 2020 – Dec. 31, 2021 or have received unemployment benefits between that period. If their AGI is less than $50,000, they do not have to meet those requirements.

Tribal colleges and public institutions will have the option to opt-in to having their students qualify for the grants this spring, according to Hovis. Students at colleges that do not opt-in in the spring will be considered for the grants in fall 2022.

Economic impact

The goal of the grants is to increase the number of people graduating with a postsecondary degree and encourage them to enter careers necessary to the economy, Hovis said.

“Workforce development and supporting people looking to go into high-need areas really felt in line with our mission and our work,” Hovis said. “We also know that during the pandemic, those [workers], especially in healthcare, education and public service, were our first responders. A lot of these people were out there every day, making sure that our communities kept running.”

Teachers have become more flexible with their teaching methods due to the pandemic, said Donna Andrews, principal of Marcy School for the Arts. She said her job changed from working directly with students to supporting teachers as they transitioned to online teaching platforms.

Andrews said the Minneapolis school district is struggling to hire teachers, especially those working in special education. She also said the Minnesota Future Together grants are a great way to encourage diversity in a new generation of teachers.

“Especially in Minneapolis, we would like to see more teachers of color,” Andrews said.

One of the reasons why there is a shortage of people going into certain careers is because workers had an unpleasant experience during the pandemic, said Aaron Sojourner, labor economist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management.

“The virus basically reduces the value of work for a lot of people, especially in jobs where you’re face-to-face with customers or co-workers,” Sojourner said. “It also reduces the value of jobs for employers because maybe they’re not getting as much business as they were.”

At the same time, Sojourner said the jobs in the grant program are growing quickly and he expects more job openings than ever in the coming years. Students can learn more about which careers are expected to experience the most growth here.

“I think that it is smart to invest in our people and to offer incentives for Minnesotans to build their skills in areas that will be productive in the future,” Sojourner said.

Most University of Minnesota students are familiar with the green bikes visible across campus, but many do not take advantage of them as a reliable source of transportation. Nice Ride is looking to change that.

Nice Ride for All has provided $5 annual memberships to people who qualify for a state or federal assistance program since 2019. However, FAFSA was not included as an eligibility qualifier until this April.

All students receiving Federal Student Aid are now eligible for the discounted membership.

Included in that membership is unlimited 45-minute rides on a bike for the year, with a $0.05 charge for every minute over that limit. E-bikes and scooters are also discounted, with e-bikes charged an extra $0.05 per minute and scooters charged an extra $0.19 per minute.

How to sign up

Students can sign up for the program online or in-person with a Nice Ride worker.

Third-year students Joe Nihart and Shawn Frommelt decided to sign up for the program after being “enticed” by the free water bottles at the University transportation fair Sept. 7.

“The lady said it was five dollars for free rides all year, and that’s kind of a steal,” Nihart said. “Especially being a student in my third year, I see the Nice Ride stations everywhere, and it’s one of those things where you kind of never do it for some reason, but if it was just free to use, I would do it.”

Frommelt said he lives two-and-a-half miles from campus and has to take the metro to class every day. He said he sees Nice Ride docks around his neighborhood and that he thinks other students would also find the membership useful.

Students who signed up at the event had their financial aid credentials verified on the spot and were able to start using the bikes that day.

Students who sign up online must submit proof that they receive one of the federal or state grants listed here. The application will be processed and approved within several business days.
Each Nice Ride for All membership is $84 cheaper than a standard yearly membership and there is currently no limit on participation. The program is possible through Lyft, which acquired Nice Ride in 2018 and is funding the discounted rate.

Director of State and Local Policy and Outreach at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs Frank Douma said students may want to be cautious about giving confidential information to large corporations like Lyft. Data breaches in the first half of 2021 exposed 18.8 billion private records, and students are required to submit financial and personal information to sign up for a membership.

There are currently 800 people signed up for the discounted membership program in Minneapolis, said Jordan Levine, the head of transit, bike and scooter communications at Lyft. About half of those people are students who signed up in the past month, Levine wrote in an email.

Minneapolis is one of the most bicycle-friendly cities in the United States, making it much easier for a person to be “multimodal and efficient,” Douma said.

“If you’re in a place where you can conveniently access a bicycle, you can probably get where you’re going more quickly and conveniently without polluting the environment and at a lower cost,” Douma said.

As Abdirizak Bihi, known as Bihi by his friends, walks down the streets of Cedar-Riverside, he hardly makes it 20 feet without greeting a neighbor. Nearly everyone who walks by stops to chat with him.

Bihi has lived as a renter in Cedar-Riverside for the past 24 years, currently working as the Director of the Somali Education and Activist Center and host of Somali Link Radio for KFAI. He said he hopes to bring his “honesty, integrity and courage” to the Minneapolis City Council.

Bihi ran for City Council against current Ward 6 Council member Jamal Osman in a Special Election in 2020. Last year, he was running against 11 other candidates, but in this election, Bihi and Osman are currently the only candidates.

“I think people need to listen to both of us,” Bihi said. “I think we need to look at honesty, who has done work with the community … and also who has the courage to tell voters what exactly they are going to do.”

Policy plans

Bihi said since he lives in Ward 6, he sees which changes need to be made and has helped make them happen as a community organizer. His major priorities are reforming public safety, increasing affordable housing and increasing resources for people who struggle with addiction.

Bihi said he does not want to defund the police department, but he does want to reform it. He added that he wanted mental health practitioners to respond to mental health 911 calls so that police officers are available to respond to violent crimes.

“We need to look at where police shootings and brutality come from,” Bihi said. “We need to address mental health issues.”

Bihi said increasing home ownership is necessary to fight economic inequality. “We need to create pathways for working families to own their own homes in the city, because that is wealth creation,” Bihi said.

In Minneapolis, 25% of Black families own their home compared to 76% of white families. According to the study, Minneapolis has the lowest rate of Black homeownership among U.S. metro areas with over one million residents.

Shamso Guled is a volunteer on Bihi’s campaign who said he “wants to do a lot for youth” and plans to institute new programming and address the opioid crisis in the ward.

“He’s on a first-name basis with everyone,” Guled said. “I feel like [the candidate] who makes the difference in that community deserves that seat.”

Looking out for his neighbors

Bihi said his extensive experience working for his neighbors qualifies him to be the Ward 6 Council member.

In 2001, Bihi said many of his neighbors in Cedar-Riverside experienced unemployment, which inspired him to help them move into affordable housing and find jobs. During the last decade, Bihi said he has worked to provide resources for Somali American people to enter different careers such as construction, health care, machine operating and policing.

Guled said Bihi helped her and other residents with disputes with landlords, property owners and police officers. She added that she grew up in Cedar-Riverside, and Bihi helped her negotiate with her landlords when she was threatened with eviction.

Starlin Hersi is another longtime friend of Bihi’s who wrote in text that she has “always seen Bihi as my role model.”

“Bihi always puts others first and never lets the people around him struggle,” Hersi wrote. “I trust him to do what’s right to better our community.”

For over a year, activists have been advocating to defund the police and shift power to other public safety professionals. Some of these activists say they see the Yes 4 Minneapolis charter amendment as their chance to make this happen.

On Nov. 2, citizens of Minneapolis will be able to vote “yes” or “no” on whether to replace the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD) with a new Department of Public Safety. The new structure would aim to take a more comprehensive approach to public safety through multiple divisions of public health professionals.

The fight over the question

Local coalition Yes 4 Minneapolis petitioned for the charter amendment to end up as a city question on the ballot for the election. JaNae’ Bates, director of communications for the organization, said the process to get it on the ballot has been long and difficult, but she is hopeful that “democracy wins out” in the end.

“It’s in the hands of the people of Minneapolis to make a choice … realizing that if they choose anything else, they are choosing to stay stuck in the status quo,” Bates said.

Under the current Minneapolis charter, the mayor has complete control over MPD, with the power to appoint and discipline all employees and make rules within the department. It also requires that the city council funds a force of at least 1.7 employees per 1,000 residents, though the city is about 100 officers short of the 730 that are indicated as required by the most recent census.

The ballot question has cycled through multiple iterations due to challenges over the wording. Mayor Jacob Frey vetoed the ballot language twice and two different lawsuits were brought against it, but the city council passed the updated version on Tuesday.

The current question includes an explanatory note, which says that: “The department would be led by a commissioner nominated by the mayor and appointed by the council. The Police Department, and its chief, would be removed from the City Charter. The Public Safety Department could include police officers, but the minimum funding requirement would be eliminated.”

Implications of amending

If 51% of voters decide to vote “yes” to amending the charter, it will go into effect. If a voter doesn’t fill out the question, it will not count toward the total.

As stated in the ballot language, the immediate result of passing the amendment will be the creation of a new Department of Public Safety and the end to minimum staffing requirements for police. The city council will share decision-making authority with the mayor over department operations.

“It creates the framework where we can make the change,” Ward 3 Council member Steve Fletcher said. “Setting up a leadership structure that decenters policing a little bit, so we can imagine other alternatives, is one important component of making necessary reforms.”

If the amendment is passed, Fletcher said he imagines the council will pass multiple ordinances quickly after the election. He said they would first likely move the Police Department into a division of the Department of Public Safety, which would also include a division of violence prevention and a division to handle mental health responses.

However, some believe that changing the charter is unnecessary and will do more harm than good. Leili Fatehi, campaign manager for All of Mpls, a DFL activist group against the ballot initiative, said meaningful police reform can still happen without the charter being changed.

“This notion that the city council is powerless to fund safety beyond policing, the notion that our city’s charter has locked us into a police-only model of public safety … is patently false,” Fatehi said.

Fletcher said he agrees there are other ways to make changes to the city’s system of public safety, but currently the mayor is the only politician who can directly change the operations of the Police Department.

“The mayor has had four years now to make these policy changes, and he hasn’t done it,” Fletcher said. “And many mayors and many chiefs before then also failed to do it. A charter change can’t be about this mayor and this chief and this council; it has to be about how we are going to govern for many mayors and many chiefs and many councils.”