MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota — After a 10-month process, a new structure to the Minneapolis government was signed into action by Mayor Jacob Frey on Thursday.
"It is a momentous day in The City of Minneapolis," Council member Andrea Jenkins said.
In November 2021, 52% of Minneapolis residents voted 'yes' to a charter amendment to adopt an executive mayor and legislative council form of government, eliminating the Executive Commission, and giving the mayor authority over city departments, excluding the clerk's and treasurer's offices.
"Imagine coming into work every day and having 14 different bosses depending on the issue and not be certain who exactly you're reporting to and when," Frey said about the previous structure of the government.
He hopes the new alignments can improve the pace of how the city responds to certain issues ranging from snowplow routes to mayoral items like public housing.
"Throughout the history of Minneapolis, it has been a constant struggle to understand who is responsible for what activities in our city," Jenkins said.
Jenkins, along with councilmember Linea Palmisano, worked closely with the mayor on compromises the council wanted to see in this amendment.
Councilmember Jeremiah Ellison had strong feelings about the initial proposal by the mayor but expressed support on Thursday of the final decision.
"The truth is that I don't know there is a version of this proposal that would fully satisfy the kind of local government I would want to run or want to be a part of," Ellison said, "that being said a lot of the changes I wanted to see happen, have happened with this proposal."
Meanwhile, Councilmember Robin Wonsley expressed frustration Thursday about the final plan.
"This government restructure comes with no plans for tracking success. It doesn't come with a definition of success," Wonsley said.
When KARE 11 reporter Morgan Wolfe asked Frey how he would hold his administration accountable by tracking success, his answer was through data.
"It doesn't make sense to in this adoption of a new ordinance, which applies to everything, laying out the specific metrics that will apply to everything we will possibly deal with," Frey said. "For every single issue there will be different metrics."
Some of the changes in the ordinance have taken shape, like the creation of an Office for Public Safety and the hiring and swearing in of the new community safety commissioner.
Frey says the rest of the staffing for the new arrangement of government will be decided throughout the budget process, and hopefully set in place by the end of the year. This includes hiring a City Operations Officer.
"Nobody can argue there won't be hurdles along the way," Frey said. "But I can tell you ahead of time, we will deal with them."
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