Lisa has been vocal on the three charter amendments on the ballot for Minneapolis voters this year. She has taken strong stands on how she will vote on these amendments. Join her in supporting a progressive and pragmatic agenda for the future of Minneapolis by voting on these amendments. 

Question 1- Government Restructure: YES

Lisa supports the good governance charter amendment, it’s a crucial part of creating a better, more responsive and accountable city government. At present, department heads report to 13 council members and the Mayor. Each department has 14 bosses. One Council Member can direct one thing and another can say something completely different, 7 votes rules the day, always.  This has led to tremendous inefficiencies, minimal accountability and has resulted in many quality department heads leaving the city.

Question 2- Abolish the Police: NO

Systemic change is required in how Minneapolis handles law enforcement. The proposed public safety charter amendment does not provide that systemic change. Calling our law enforcement function the Department of Public Safety instead of the Minneapolis Police Department isn’t transformational. Removing the Police Chief position from the Charter doesn’t create change, it moves accountability further from elected leadership by making the Chief accountable to another department head. Having 14 bosses making decisions about law enforcement doesn’t solve the problems with MPD. Under current state law, a Department of Public Safety in Minneapolis will still have the same union, laws that require binding arbitration,  and a broken system currently used to discipline and fire officers.

Question 3- Rent Control: NO

Most economic experts agree, rent control has unintended consequences and Lisa does not support it. Rent control has proven to suppress supply, discourage capital investment and encourage apartment owners to convert to condos. The most effective way to stabilize increasing costs of housing is to increase incomes, invest in rental assistance, and produce more affordable housing. The city’s largest supply of affordable housing is naturally occurring, not subsidized. Limiting small owners from increasing rents hinders their ability to pay increasing taxes and invest in improvements. Any policy passed needs to take into account the careful balance of government intervention in the economics of the rental market.

The number one responsibility of municipal government is to ensure the safety of all of its residents. If residents, workers and visitors are not and do not feel safe, our city will not thrive. For far too long the law enforcement function of municipal government has been required to handle too many problems, many of which police officers are not best able or trained to handle. 

We have come to a place where we have relied on a police response when other interventions could and should be implemented. If we don’t have public safety, we have nothing. We owe it to our communities to work to get this right. Here is the work I have done as well as the vision I have for the future of public safety in Minneapolis:

In order to ensure true community policing we need more officers not fewer. Our police are currently moving from 911 call to 911 call and are not afforded the crucial time needed to work within neighborhoods to build relationships, develop trust and adequately keep our city safe.

• • We need to expand community-based policing — sworn personnel who live in and work with the communities they serve to solve community specific problems collaboratively — while also rebuilding our current police force which is down over 150 officers due to retirement and a large number of officers being out on medical leave. 
  • Last budget cycle, I successfully supported allocating resources to fill vacancies and hire recruits as they become available to address our staffing shortage, but there is still more that can and should be done to support this work.
  • We need to expand our community policing efforts and this is off to a good start with what was begun through the budget process at the end of last year. 
  • We need to build upon this to ensure that we have a fully functioning police force that is trained to keep everyone safe. 
  • I also support Chief Arrandondo’s new priorities in hiring including city residency and a community service requirement, so that sworn personnel are deeply in touch with the communities they are serving. 

We must develop alternatives to a police response for some low-level police activity. I have supported the funding of the office for violence prevention and have reassigned certain low level police activities to non-police entities. Some of these low level police activities include: 

• • • All traffic related items including traffic accident reports are being handled by traffic control  
    • Property related reports are being done through online efforts or inspections staff.
    • Expanding the co-responder program which embeds mental health professionals into the mix to respond to folks experiencing a mental health crisis 
    • As calls come in to 911 we need to ensure an appropriate response which does not always mean armed law enforcement. We need to de-escalate many calls for service so that when residents call the police they feel heard and responded to.

We need to work to hold bad officers accountable. 

• • Work with our city staff and state legislators to pass laws that enable the City to remove bad police officers from the job and prevent rehiring 
  • Incentivize progress by tying improvements in public safety outcomes to job performance
  • I also support reforming the arbitration process at the state level to ensure that bad officers are held accountable for their actions instead of remaining on the police force.

We must support our good police officers and give them the tools and training to excel in their jobs. 

• • We are currently relying too heavily on overtime to address our staffing shortage. This is an unsustainable strategy that overburdens officers, creates greater risks to themselves and those they are serving, and is an inefficient use of taxpayer dollars. If we want true community policing we must ensure that our officers are getting the time off that they need to refresh in order to excel in their positions.
  • We must continue to update and re-evaluate the best hiring practices, making sure that police officers serve in the communities that they are from 
  • Continue to support Chief of Police Medaria Arradondo and his vision of procedural justice and equitable service. 
  • We must work to address the underlying systemic racism within the police department by offering mandatory training and resources aimed at addressing these issues and targeting, identifying and eliminating racial biases within the police force. 

Charter Amendment Question 2

Systemic change is required in how Minneapolis handles law enforcement. The proposed public safety Charter amendment does not provide that systemic change. Calling our law enforcement function the Department of Public Safety instead of the Minneapolis Police Department isn’t transformational. Removing the Police Chief position from the Charter doesn’t create change, it moves accountability further from elected leadership by making the Chief accountable to anther department head. Having 14 bosses making decisions about law enforcement doesn’t solve the problems with MPD. Under current state law with a new Department of Public Safety, Minneapolis will still have the same union, the same state laws that require binding arbitration, the same inability to require residency, and the same broken system currently used to discipline and fire officers. 

While there are many ideas and work groups looking at what a public safety for all process and program could be, we do not have a new system ready to implement and will not in 2021.  I strongly oppose the concept of eliminating sworn personnel until an adequate alternative is implemented and vetted in our community. I believe in both and approaches to public safety.  Harmful rhetoric such as abolish and defund the police has created an environment where people feel unsafe and criminals feel emboldened. We can and should look at new ways of ensuring safety for all in our city. 

I believe all work to eliminate socio economic disparities centers around the belief that what we look like and where we come from should not determine the benefit, burden or responsibility we bear in our society. To me reconciliation needs to focus on righting the historical inequities in housing, education and health care.

I have been a leader in addressing racial disparities through economic justice and economic development. To me, the largest issue of our time is racism and the negative impacts it has had on our BIPOC communities.

• To ensure true racial equity we must work to reform our public safety system to ensure that all of our communities feel safe in our city. We must work to make concrete reforms to our public safety system to ensure that the tragedies that happened to George Floyd will never happen again. 
• I support and have engaged with the ReCast Minneapolis program, Resilience in Communities After Stress and Trauma, which is intended to assist families and high-risk youth in promoting resilience and equity in our community especially during times of trauma and civil unrest. This program works through implementing evidence-based violence prevention and community youth engagement programs.
• I will continue to center policy on building racial equity through economic justice, this includes affordable housing programs to ensure that our most vulnerable communities which tend to be BIPOC residents have a place to call home.
• I will continue to ensure that there are job training programs out there for our BIPOC communities, and to ensure that all avenues are open for our residents to build power through economic opportunity.

Over the last term, I led the efforts to provide property tax incentives for private owners offering affordable housing and limiting rent increases in those properties, financing over 1000 units of deeply affordable housing each year and focusing on homeownership in communities of color. We need to do more. Much of my time on city council has been focused on creating more affordable housing dwellings for the city. I will continue to make this one of my primary focuses on the city council. I believe that rental assistance for those who are unemployed and can’t pay rent should be expanded and easier to access, legal assistance should be provided to renters who face eviction. Ordinances should be changed to allow for more single room occupancy homes, Accessory Dwelling Units (ADU’s) and other types of housing such as tiny homes that can ensure deep affordability to those who have been homeless. Going forward it is clear that new and untested models need to be embraced and expanded to meet this critical need in our city and I am ready to do the work as I have my whole career.

Charter Amendment Question 3: Rent Control and Rent Stabilization

Most economic experts agree, rent control has unintended consequences and I do not support it. Rent control has proven to suppress supply, discourage capital investment and encourage apartment owners to convert their units to condos. The most effective way to stabilize increasing costs of housing is to increase incomes, invest in rental assistance, and produce more affordable housing. Carefully crafted rent stabilization efforts could have a positive effect on the rental market. I could support stabilization efforts should Minneapolis voters approve them by caping excessive increases or tying increases to inflation plus 2-4 percent. The city’s largest supply of affordable housing is naturally occurring, not subsidized, affordable housing. Limiting small owners, those with 1-20 apartments from increasing rents at 3-4 percent or less hinders their ability to pay increasing taxes and invest in improvements. We should exempt single family homes for rent by the owner as opposed to investors who have bought up large numbers of homes preventing affordable home ownership and new construction. Any policy passed needs to take into account the careful balance of government intervention in the economics of the rental market and the needs of both owners and their tenants.

Minneapolis is the economic engine of the entire region and economic development is critical to a safe and livable city. Small businesses play a crucial role in creating jobs and delivering goods and services to residents. Especially in the middle of a pandemic when jobs have been lost and businesses have closed. Everyone has realized the importance of a strong business community that keeps people employed and allows for goods and services that are necessary to our survival. As we move through the pandemic it is more important than ever to have an active workforce development system so those who have been unemployed can find good living wage jobs. We need to ease the pain of property taxes and fees that will help small businesses come back to life and we need to make financial investments in our small businesses on commercial corridors who have been impacted by civil unrest because they serve neighbors critical needs. For downtown Minneapolis to recover we need businesses to bring their employees back, arts and cultural organizations to have the support they need to open and people to feel safe coming back downtown to eat at their favorite restaurant cheer on their favorite sports team or visit live music venues. The city enterprise must be supportive of new ways of doing things like allowing sidewalk café’s where there used to be parking meters and encouraging more outdoor events without the limit on permits and without fees. We need to prioritize a vibrant downtown as the economic engine for the city and the region in an equitable way where everyone, residents, visitors, workers and business owners can benefit from the work they contribute to make our city thrive.

Our environment is extremely important, and the only one we have. I have been a leader in climate sense policies working to eliminate our dependence on greenhouse gases. I was one of the first council members bringing these issues forward. I championed the original work on solar energy and green roofs and was instrumental in getting green roofs on the Target Center and City Hall. All of the investments that we make in clean energy, green infrastructure, local food, transportation and water systems are opportunities for us to support local businesses and train our residents for the jobs of the future. Over my tenure we have been doing a good job at initiating this. We have decreased our greenhouse gas emissions 19 percent since 2006, exceeding the 2015 reduction goal of 15 percent. But we need to do better. Future goals include a 30 percent reduction by 2025 and an 80 percent reduction by 2050. I will continue to commit our city to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2030 and ensure that we partner with community based environmental organizations through the G21 partnerships to explore pathways toward a low carbon future.

How we as a city respond to climate change is clearly linked to how we as individuals and groups get around. We have identified bold policies adopted in the cities comprehensive plan which identified transportation as a critical piece of how we increase equity, address climate change, reduce carbon emissions and improve human health. We must be able to ensure the movement of people as well as goods and services across the city and nation. We need to ensure that streets are places for multiple users as well as an asset available to assist with our climate change goals. As a cold weather city we need to be aware of how people get around especially those who walk, take transit and bike. I am committed to implementing our complete streets policy, have a strong commitment to vision zero and ensuring that streets are designed for people, with new street design that focuses on safety, functionality and a focus on people by better design.