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…
BY ED FELIEN He’s their useful idiot. They’ve been playing him for 30 years. In March of 1986, Dubinin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N., with his daughter, went up to the Trump Tower to meet Trump. According to his daughter, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravdanewspaper, he told Trump,…
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 He’s their useful idiot. They’ve been playing him for 30 years. In March of 1986, Dubinin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N., with his daughter, went up to the Trump Tower to meet Trump. According to his daughter, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravdanewspaper, he told Trump,…
BY ED FELIEN Dave Bicking has stopped the reappointment of Susan Segal as city attorney. Bicking has been a longtime opponent of the city attorney. He challenged her decision to allow the city to give a New Jersey racketeer hundreds of millions of dollars to build a sports stadium when…
BY ED FELIEN This year Valentine’s Day fell on the same day as Ash Wednesday. They always happen around the same time, right after Groundhog’s Day on Feb. 2. What a strange collection of holidays. What could they possibly have in common? Perhaps they’re all a riff on the ancient…
BY ED FELIEN You had a great Super Bowl party, and the Downtown Council honored you at a fancy luncheon. But you work for us, not Jimmy Fallon or Tom Brady, not the Downtown Business Council or the StarTribune. We hired you to run this City, and we expect progressive…
BY ED FELIEN It won’t happen fast. We don’t want it to happen fast. It’s an important educational experience. It should take time and it must be as public as possible, so nobody freaks out and thinks it’s a trick or unfair. They won’t bust him for collusion with the…
BY ED FELIEN This year Valentine’s Day fell on the same day as Ash Wednesday. They always happen around the same time, right after Groundhog’s Day on Feb. 2. What a strange collection of holidays. What could they possibly have in common? Perhaps they’re all a riff on the ancient…
BY ED FELIEN One of my more ambitious projects was to try to take over the electric company. It had all the romantic allure of Castro and Che sweeping down from the hills to take over a radio station and declare the Revolution. In Minnesota more than 146 municipalities owned…
ED FELIEN Tomorrow night, Feb. 13, from 7 to 9 p.m., at Pearl Park Recreation Center, the Park Board will be hosting a meeting to discuss its Lake Nokomis Shoreline Enhancements Project. According to the Park Board, “This project is focused on stabilizing erosion along portions of the shoreline, improving…
Columns by Ed Felien