BY ED FELIEN On Saturday afternoon, June 23, around 5 o’clock, Thurman Blevins was walking with his girlfriend. There was a baby stroller and a baby nearby. Witnesses say Blevins was drinking Amsterdam Vodka out of a bottle. Officers Justin Schmidt and Ryan Kelly pulled up in their squad car…
BY ED FELIEN The hardest choice in the August 14 Primary for people in South Minneapolis has to be the choice between State Representative Ilhan Omar and State Senator Patricia Torres Ray for Congress in the 5th Congressional District. Ilhan has national recognition as the first Somali representative in a…
BY ED FELIEN Last Monday I wrote to Park Board Superintendent Mary Merrill: “Are we to assume as a result of Board’s approval of another Barr Engineering study to evaluate three possibilities: ‘• Articulation of a set of working principles to guide explorations and for use as a tool in…
BY ED FELIEN On Saturday afternoon, June 23, around 5 o’clock, Thurman Blevins was walking with his girlfriend. There was a baby stroller and a baby nearby. Witnesses say Blevins was drinking Amsterdam Vodka out of a bottle. Officers Justin Schmidt and Ryan Kelly pulled up in their squad car…
BY ED FELIEN The Park Board can stop the flooding of basements in South Minneapolis and the flooding of the Hiawatha Golf Course, and it won’t cost taxpayers a dime. The flooding is caused by the dam/weir at 27th Avenue at the outlet of Lake Hiawatha. It backs up about…
BY ED FELIEN Snelling Yards is a vehicle storage lot for the city at 3601 E. 44th St. between Snelling Avenue and the railroad tracks. In the 1930s the city had storage facilities in every ward especially for snowplowing equipment that would be watched carefully by the two aldermen from…
BY ED FELIEN A report from the Hiawatha Golf Course Property Master Plan Citizen’s Advisory Committee (CAC) meeting at Park Board Headquarters A friend who was there told me: “I think it was an excellent meeting. Did you notice that most of the CAC questions came from women? These are…
BY ED FELIEN Snelling Yards is a vehicle storage lot for the city at 3601 E. 44th St. between Snelling Avenue and the railroad tracks. In the 1930s the city had storage facilities in every ward especially for snowplowing equipment that would be watched carefully by the two aldermen from…
BY ED FELIEN Virgil Welna died last month. He was 89. For 50 years I depended on him for advice. I walked into Welna Hardware with a problem, and he knew that problem, and he had a solution for it. It wasn’t just the wise expertise, though. When he saw…
BY ED FELIEN A report from the Hiawatha Golf Course Property Master Plan Citizen’s Advisory Committee meeting at Park Board Headquarters A friend who was there told me: “I think it was an excellent meeting. Did you notice that most of the CAC questions came from women? These are ferocious…
BY ED FELIEN There’s a lot you can do if you’re a City Council member in Minneapolis. Someone came to me while I was on the Council and told me they were being evicted from their apartment because the landlord hadn’t paid the utilities. They thought they should be able…
BY ED FELIEN The Minneapolis City Council Housing Policy and Development Committee will hold a public hearing on May 2 to allow “public verbal input pertaining to the Draft 2018 Consolidated Action Plan (CAP).” Your participation is important. The city is required by HUD to listen to you and pass…
BY ED FELIEN We’ll be fighting in the streets With our children at our feet And the morals that they worship will be gone And the men who spurred us on Sit in judgment of all the wrong They decide and the shotgun sings the song I’ll tip my hat…
You will be asked to vote on the confirmation of Susan Segal for city attorney at the City Council meeting March 30. Even Segal’s most severe critics would agree with you that she is intelligent, well versed in the law and has been a good and faithful servant to the…
BY ED FELIEN It happened in less than a minute. I got on the elevator at City Hall on the third floor to go down to the parking garage. Jack Baker got on with me. Jack had been president of the university student association, a very out gay. He’d just…
Columns by Ed Felien