But achieving maintaining a quorum has been an increasing issue for us, especially when there's no advance notification that somebody won't be here.

I think if you're trying to have this happen in the same time frame that could add some complexity of trying to disaggregate technical amendments really significant substantive changes to how council exercises its authority and then this is I think a blend of quite a substantial change obviously creating a new elected seat is a pretty significantly substantive change...

I personally would really benefit from that so I want to advocate for it and be transparent in that. I um you know we started our meeting late today in part because I I was the fourth member to be here and I was really late...

I will say you know, again adding you know, another person and you know, I I it was kind of delineated with you geographically. Again, I think it's important that we have folks who are elected and considering the full outcome of the city and and I think if we reduce it to geographies we might see folks thinking geographically...

I think that the quorum issue is really about um how urgently the members of this body see this work. And I think that when the economy is strong it doesn't feel like the decision here is feeling as critical because it's in alignment with a body with a recommendation generally speaking.

And I think that in in the world I would like to work towards, that is that sort of sentiment is part of the discussions here at the BET. And so, the challenge that Commissioner Payne references is or that kind of brings up is that the mayor and the city council members are putting out fires every single day.

And the income tax obviously has many unanswered questions, but it's our biggest potential for raising a significant amount of revenue.

I came in very skeptical about PILOT. But seeing the amount of revenue that they're raising in Boston, which granted is a different context, but if you had the right concept of use around that money... I think that's pretty interesting because we don't need state approval to do that.

And the idea that I've had around LGA reform uh it is essentially to try again weaving in hou- housing policy. Um the LGA formula is uh got several weighted factors... I think that one way that we could address both ours, funding needs and try to establish better statewide policy and therefore get more bipartisan support would be advocating for uh amending the LGA formula to include a weighted factor for uh the adoption of upzoning housing policy or a model upzoning uh policy.

So there's there's these significant ways in which disinvestment in in public good uh was was advanced by the Pawlenty administration, and and to um to advocate for um for for rethinking those exact systems is is I think uh both principled and smart, and uh and and politically a thing we should be doing.

from a valley's perspective, I'm I am most interested in a local option sales tax. I understand that that uh that comes with such a uh a strenuous lift uh um at an intergovernmental level with um with the requirement of state approval and and a lack of consensus there that uh perhaps I I you know, I don't I don't have a lot of um faith or or I don't I I don't have a lot of optimism, that's the better word. Um that this is something that's going to be successful, but I I think that at the the the state's largest city advocating for such a thing could lead to um the the state um using you know, considering adding um aspects of taxing income and wealth that uh whether we see that revenue in a direct way or not is beneficial and is a step in the right direction in how we think about public goods, whose responsibility it is to contribute towards them, and whether that should be done in equitable manner or not, because currently it is not.

I am most interested in payment in lieu of taxes um as as a place where I want to do further work, um and believe, to summarize, that I think the the city of Minneapolis' position should be to continue advocating for LGA formula reform, to advocate for the expansion of the downtown tax boundary, to advocate for a local option income tax or an increase to income taxes broadly and that something that's worthy of further exploration or consideration is is around vacancy and land value.

so right now the city is very limited in what fees it can charge for different services and so for things like parking, the laws I more or less understand it is that you can only charge a fee commensurate with the cost of providing the service itself.