Budget Lines Are Being Drawn – What About Us?

Cam Gordon

BY CAM GORDON

Following his state of city address this spring, Mayor Frey is due to release his proposed city budget by Aug. 15. Now the city council has responded with their priorities.
The budget, which is likely to be close to $2 billion, may be the most consequential decision the mayor and council make this year. With this being an election year, it takes on added significance and potential risk to those seeking re-election.
At this stage, there appear to be areas of agreement among all 14 city decision-makers, as well as specific requests that offer the mayor a path forward to a unanimously supported budget, if that is what he wants. Or, we could be headed for another tumultuous process like last year where the council had to override Frey’s veto to get the 2025 budget formal approval.
Frey’s 2026 priorities were outlined in his address: safety, housing, economic inclusion & neighborhoods, the Northside, Downtown, climate action & health, and good governance.
In June, the council forwarded to the mayor their 2026 budget priorities. To do that, the Chair and Vice Chair of the Budget Committee drafted and sent a survey to each council member. Council members were asked, among other things, to weigh in on levy amounts, areas of overspending and underspending, and to submit up to three citywide and up to three neighborhood or ward-specific priorities.

Elliott Payne, President of the Minneapolis City Council

The results are enlightening.
Three council members chose not to fill out the survey at all. Council Member Andrea Jenkins (W8), who is not seeking reelection, didn’t respond. Michael Rainville (W3) and LaTrisha Vetaw (W4) didn’t fill out any of the survey either. Rainville sent a short email sharing two goals. “My goal is to raise taxes by 2% to allow for inflation while preserving as many City jobs as possible,” he wrote. “Another goal is to have the budget for Neighborhood Safety services spent equitably throughout the whole City.”
Vetaw’s staff member, Maggie Kohl, wrote a short note back saying only, “CM Vetaw’s budget priorities are keeping the property tax levy as low as possible as well as geographically even distribution of resources within the Office of Neighborhood Safety.”
Others council member did complete the survey, some at more length and with more detail than others.
Elliot Payne (W1), for example, prioritized 2 things as citywide priorities: adding a fulltime staff person to the Office of Immigrant & Refugee Affairs and covering the Minneapolis Public School costs of $1,959,062 for the Metro Transit Go-To Program which provides transportation for all high school students.
Robin Wonsley (W2) prioritized implementing the Safe and Thriving Communities plan, increased funding for traffic calming and fully funding the public housing levy and additional supportive housing programs.
Jeremiah Ellison (W5) chose the affordable housing trust fund, economic development and emergency shelters & homeless response.

City Hall

Jamal Osman (W6) shared only one priority, $150,000 to address opioid use.
Katie Cashman (W7) prioritized more public bathrooms, followed by expansion and ongoing funding for the safety ambassador program to include all cultural corridors, estimated to be around $5 million, and $1.43 million in ongoing funding for the storefront vibrancy program.
Jason Chavez (W9) chose $1.5 million in new ongoing funding for shelters, and increased traffic calming.
Aisah Chughtai (W10) listed converting the old First precinct station into a new fire station as her top priority, followed by adding a fulltime staff person to the office of immigrant and refugee affairs and expanding rental relocation assistance.
Emily Koski (W11) put maintaining or lowering the current property tax levy at the top, with first responder hiring and retention second and traffic calming third.
Aurin Chowdhury (W12) chose continued investment in affordable housing and traffic calming with safe streets expansion as her priorities.
Linea Palmisano’s (W13) only priorities were no new spending and limiting any increase to property taxes. “We need to make deep cuts in order to limit spending,” she wrote “It is my hope that this does not mean lay-offs of City staff.”
Staff scored the results of how the ten council members ranked ten well established city priorities: housing and safety, which were also prioritized by the mayor, ranked highest, followed by several items in the middle, with good governance, civic participation, arts, culture and preservation falling far behind.
1. Affordable Housing & Homelessness – 85 points
2. Community Safety & Police Reform – 80 points
3. Economic Inclusion & Living Wage Jobs – 57 points
4. Racial Equity & Disparity Reduction – 57 points
5. Climate Action & Environmental Justice – 54 points
6. Public Health & Wellbeing – 51 points
7. Effective Public Services & Public Service Access – 51 points
8. Transportation, Infrastructure, & Public Space – 50 points
9. Good Governance & Civic Participation – 36 points
10. Arts, Culture, & Historical Preservation – 25 points
In terms of ward specific priories, 17 different things were identified by the members who completed the survey. Those shared by more than one member included completing the South Minneapolis Community Safety Center, expanding the Safety Ambassadors program, and creating a construction hardship loan program for small businesses.
Housing was the most noted area of underspending, followed by traffic calming, and climate initiatives.
Areas of overspending identified by council respondents included contractual services, the high cost of upper management and appointed officials, the high cost of some traditional law enforcement programs, resources and risk-related expenses, which likely relates to legal settlements.
The adopted levy increase for 2025 was 6.8%, with a projected increase of 10.8% for next year. Most of the council was open to some levy increase but no one supported an increase of over 10%. Based on these results, the mayor and finance might be wise to aim for 8% or lower.
So, now the mayor and council have weighed in publicly. That is a good thing.
But what about us?
Hopefully the city has already asked, or will soon ask, or even survey, members of their own civic advisory groups and commissions to share their budget priorities. Hopefully they will reach out to neighborhood group board members and other formally recognized civic groups to gather their input.
Increasing efforts to include more people in the city budgeting process might help all of us, including elected officials, appreciate civic participation more.
Seeing citywide survey results might help us all understand each other better.
It might even help jumpstart the development of the larger and more authentic participatory budgeting program that city council studied in 2017, which led to a “Minneapolis Participatory Budgeting Playbook.” The council looked at it again in 2024 and announced plans to host pilot sessions with cultural groups and “develop communications strategy.”
While it is doubtful that the mayor or council will actually set aside 0.25% of the budget this year like Sarasota, FL, did to be spent on projects developed and voted on by residents, getting more input from residents about priorities doesn’t seem like too much to ask for.
Find more details on the city council priorities survey of themselves at https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCAV2/50444/2026-City-Council-Budget-Priorities.pdf
For the city’s 2024 report on Participatory budgeting see https://lims.minneapolismn.gov/Download/RCAV2/33954/Participatory%20Budgeting%20Overview%20and%20Introduction.pdf