The Minneapolis business regulatory environment was consistently described as complex, hard to navigate, and administratively burdensome for the business community by staff from the Minneapolis downtown Council, Minneapolis Regional Chamber, Meet Minneapolis, and Elevate Henipin. Whether accurate or not, there is a perception that Minneapolis is hard to do business in.

I have a person in my ward right now who is has been trying to apply for a business license well over a year and language is a barrier, but also um literacy is a barrier. And so, you know, there's shame associated with that. People don't want to walk into an already intimidating place and say to people who they see as professionals that I can't read and write...

I see this as a call to action. I believe that it is time now for us to change this dialogue by having a more predictable, friendly, easy to use user experience for everyone who wants to bring their business to Minneapolis.

I think that is actually enlightening because one of the first recommendations that you put in your presentation and that actually was kind of concerning to me was the reducing of regulations piece. So, I at least wanted to get a little bit more clarity because throughout the report, it it actually names like...the small business team says that they primarily do not get complaints about regulatory issues, but that is such a major highlight in this report.

the lack of communication um that happens between um the staff and also the the business owners are very difficult. It's not it's not um easy navigating around that. Um people call 311 and then you know those those communication is um never get to the right person...

But when we brought this ordinance forward um in 2022, we also heard that it was framed as a a try before you buy it. Like this was our pilot. Um meaning that after a few years of experiencing it and its proposed iteration, council and the public could then look back um at it and use now new years of data to truly make adjustments.

I do think that it's really important that this time that we take the opportunity for the residents of Minneapolis to really demonstrate a collaborative spirit about trying to work together on our differences of opinion so that we do not end up with a veto and an upheld veto.

I'll just add the comment, a veto is not a choice of this body. That's the choice of the mayor. And I hope that that's one that will not happen given the financial circumstance of the city budget.

So this particular item uh was uh is kind of a part two uh from the original which is a a gift acceptance for um members of the Minneapolis Police Department to attend the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Um... some very generous donors did exactly that. So, um, thank you to them and thank you for the recommendation from the council.

I just appreciate the Minneapolis Police Department asking for additional gift money, so we didn't contribute to further overspending the budget. Um, I think it made a lot of sense in our last resolution out of council to ask for that. Um, and I'm glad to see that it was completely possible and glad that that work happened.

I wanted to to continue moving it forward, but also with the possibility that um I also may be withdrawing it at a later date if uh things go a certain way tonight at the meeting. Thank you to all my colleagues for helping with this. It's it's very important that we support our families um during this time.

Field has a a rich history um in W 8. It's a cornerstone of the Southside African-American community and was one of the first schools in Minneapolis to participate in the desegregation programs in in 1971. Um, so the seeing that school closed in all of the of the options given was really alarming to to my community.

I will name I would like to see a full abandonment of any discussion about school closures. And I say that as someone who um lived through Chicago's quote unquote uh Renaissance 2010. Basically, that was their transformation plan. And it closed between 80 to 100 uh public schools mostly located in black, brown, and um Latino communities all over uh Chicago.

I trust the hard work that Dr. sales Adams and her deputies have put into this response, this request for information, and I've been deeply disappointed at the way that they've been received and this information has been weaponized against the narrative. I get passion in parents. I myself am particularly passionate about my kids' education, too. But we need to engage honestly in this conversation.

The conversation to be had overall is 50% of North Side students go outside of the district. And so my call is to get the 2,000 students back into MPS that we need. And so that's what I want to work with the school and the administration on is not it's not about giving up on our students. It's about welcoming our students back in to Minneapolis public schools.

I met with the mayor and he stood by his letter. So um we really can't control what the administration does. we can only control what we can do on our side of the government structure. And uh with some initial research, there are some local jurisdictions in the state of Minnesota that do have the ability to compel uh city officials uh to present.

Transparency and access to information should not depend on who occupies the mayor's office or who serves on the city council or even the willingness of any particular administration to cooperate. These are essentially foundational and fundamental principles of good governance and they must be institutionalized...

I think any relationship is really based on trust and I understand if over years there's problems with information received or trust has been broken etc etc. Um, but I also know that city staff and the mayor have never willingly stated that they would never provide information to us as a council...To bring forward a whole arena of trying to have the action of taking a subpoena against our own city seems ridiculous.

administration is not perfect. No administration will be perfect. This one or the next one. and we were elected to be the oversight and having more information. I don't see how that's a bad thing um for um treating as the administration they all you know good and they're going to tell us everything true. It's it's just not the way of we have seen um things that have that you're not happy with...

We requested but were unable to obtain a comprehensive list of data sharing agreements or memorandum of understanding with federal law enforcement agencies. And I'll repeat that part. We requested but were unable to obtain. This action is a very easy vote for me because if there's a request and information is not being provided, then council has a responsibility to get that information themselves.