recognizing Administrative Professionals Day in the city of Minneapolis. Whereas, administrative professionals, including program customer service representative, program assistants, aides to the director, and other administrative supportive staff represent one of the largest segments of the world's workforce.

It's an honor to serve as a city council member knowing that you all are behind the scenes doing the good work of the city of Minneapolis. I appreciate each and every one of you. So, thank you for being here and thank you for allowing me and my colleagues to recognize you today and every day.

I just want to add my favorite part of the day is when I can say good morning or good afternoon to one of the city staff. So grateful for what you do to help our office in the third ward carry out constituent service. So and that's what it's all about, the taxpayers making them happy and you do that.

This is recognizing Alan Hoppy for his decades of service and dedication to the City of Minneapolis. Whereas Mr. Alan Hoppy, a 4-year US Marine veteran, commenced employment with the City of Minneapolis on November 4th, 2019, starting with 18 months as senior advisor to the Board of Estimate and Taxation and then completing 5 years as the Director of Banking, Investments, and Debt under the direction of the Chief Financial Officer.

Mr. Happy, I just want to say what a pleasure it's been working with you. You know, I've I've asked questions from the dais after you've presented and they've been more like, here's a thought that came to me because of the way you presented something differently than what I read. And your thoughtful answers to those questions on the spot, right up here, you know, it is really unmatched and and I really appreciate that about you and I'll miss that about you.

Um thank you very much, council members, uh for your support and uh for the mayor's support and everything that the finance group has done. Um I appreciate being hired by the city of Minneapolis as well as the Board of Estimate and Taxation. It's been a great experience, a lot of good um hard-working people leading a team effort uh to deliver results and uh we've got a great crew um taking over um after I leave. So, I'm going to retirement and wish everyone the best.

This land easement is going to help close the Grand Rounds missing link, which is a multi-year project that will finally close the three-mile gap and will incorporate parts of Ward 2 like what's being considered in this item into overall project that includes 50 miles of parkway bicycle paths as well as pedestrian access of the Grand Rounds. So, this is a really exciting multimodal project that many government agencies have spent years advancing...

Yes, I just wanted to say one further comment on item number 10. This is so exciting that this is happening and I'm very grateful for this to be happening, but I do want to clarify that this does not complete the grand rounds, but gets us one step closer to that overall goal and an important important step, but it does not it's not the final step.

Berdel Beaks Way is going to be between Penn Avenue and Queen's Avenue North. I think it's the 10-year anniversary of Miss Beaks losing her life to gun violence in North Minneapolis. Her family is here today who asked for this street renaming in her honor. Colleagues, this is a um This is a very important renaming to the Northside community.

Thank you to the Beeks family for sharing her with us. I know this isn't a lot, but it's what we can do as a council to honor your family and your mom. Again, thank you all so much. And thank you for living in her legacy. You really are continuing the work around gun violence and making sure that this doesn't happen to anyone else.

For item five, that's the Art of the World large block event. And uh this is very exciting. We have an arts district in Minneapolis and it's in Council President Payne's ward as it is in mine. And it's just a great celebration of arts and the vitality that has happened in Northeast to all those empty buildings. So, I would I thank all the volunteers who are putting that on and I would encourage all of our colleagues and the public to attend.

This is related to Alder World in that the original design of that reconstruction was also including Quincy, which is kind of the epicenter of a lot of the Alder World activities. That project has been split into two parts, so this phase is not addressing Quincy. This is the Quincy Street is the street that our community is really invested in.

What this ordinance is asking for is a mere additional 15 days. Two weeks. Most Americans in two weeks receive another paycheck. Our community is repairing and many of those community members who lost their job, whether their jobs stopped existing or they were too fearful to go, they're getting in a place where they're picking themselves back up and they're trying to make ends ends meet for themselves and their families.

Minneapolis is a immigrant city. This is uh this is what we can do least what we can do to help folks um stay in their homes. And uh I'll definitely encourage the mayor uh not to veto this um and think about Ward 6 residents. Just think about them. Uh think about the immigrants. Think about the folks that went through a horrible time.

The problem that I'm seeing here and the problem that I am I'm getting is a lot of individuals calling me and stating that they're not able to utilize those links that, you know, once they go so far without a actual eviction notice, they're not able to get access to the funding that exists out there, that they have to have an eviction notice.

There are two different funding sources if you need rental assistance. If to there's city funded and there's county funded. If you have a court filing with with our JPA, our joint powers agreement with Hennepin County, the county through Rent Help Help Rent Help Hennepin will use their funds. So, those and if you have a pre-eviction notice and you live in Minneapolis, we use the city funds first.

I think uh, we should have less evictions and I'm thankful to my neighbors who know that less evictions means less evictions. Um, just this past weekend I went to a singing event where we sang songs and raised money for um, for rent relief in the Bancroft neighborhood. Thank you to my neighbors who are continuing to raise money...

Literally, all this ordinance does is decriminalize the possession of paraphernalia in alignment with state law. As we heard during the public hearing and online commentary from constituent outreach and from the community, this ordinance will result in better better public health and safety outcomes.

He said drug paraphernalia is commonly used to find evidence of other crimes, including sale or intent to sell. These are not my opinions. They come from our city's own lawyer answering direct questions on the record in this chamber. We need to give weight to his words because obviously he's not advocating for or against changing the ordinance. He's letting us know what will happen if we go this route as it relates to transit, treatment, and targeting drug dealers, we will be taking a tool out of our law enforcement toolkit, and we will be making our community less safe.

This is the world we're living in now with this already criminalized. So, what we're doing now is simply not working at all. Uh all that is beside the fact that we have so many overdoses in our city, on our streets, the fact that public drug use is happening now with these laws on the books. Uh so, we we're not by any means moving in the right direction on these things.

This is a pathway to hope. Um I encourage my colleagues to pass this uh for many many reasons, but for at least the hope that we can get people off the streets and into treatment and into fulfilling lives that they want and that we want for them.

And one of the beautiful things that he said and that stood out to me was that there are current protections in the law that prevent criminalization of individuals who clean up needles, who distribute needles, and individuals who carry clean needles or participate in needle exchange programs. And that really, really, really made me feel good knowing and understanding the way that the law is currently written.

Though I support this ordinance as the underlying ordinance as it is, I think a compromise is necessary to pass it and begin helping our residents immediately. That is why I'm moving to amend this ordinance to change this language to legalize marijuana paraphernalia.

I believe the public health experts when they come in and testify to us at our public hearing in the public forum um who do this work every single day. They've studied it. They practice this work every day. Telling us how important it is, how much it can be a tool to save lives for us to decriminalize the possession of drug paraphernalia, right?

The feedback I'm getting from people is fear. People are afraid. And I can't just move forward with policy. I never have and I never will. My entire 20-year public health policy uh career, I would freeze, stop policy when people felt like they didn't have a voice in it or they were fearful of what could happen after a policy passed. And that's what this is for me.

residents have been persistent in organizing to get the tower repaired and open back up to the public. There has been a tremendous amount of patience demonstrated on their end as they've worked with my office to figure out what was needed to be done and who was responsible for repairing and maintaining the tower.

And I'm excited to also hopefully see it be part of our ice cream social activities. Um, but I'm I'm really excited about this particular um, action item cuz it does brings bring us one step closer towards the reopening day of the tower. And none of that would have happened without uh, the neighbors who've cared so much um, and have volunteered out their own time um, to maintain and advocate for this uh, landmark.

In response to Operation Metro Surge, we are authoring this ordinance meant to protect immigrant renters and prohibit retaliation against renters in general in Minneapolis. I've heard from our neighbors who have been threatened to get ICE called on them by their landlords because they could not pay rent and a variety of other horrific instances.

This is That's That's really serious and that is something that should um, should be taken into deeper consideration. So, thank you for bringing that to the attention because that speaks to multiple volumes on multiple levels as it pertains to residents living in places and having threats of of um immigration or deportation or violence inflicted upon them for for living in a place because um that's a violation of fair housing.

immigration is very complicated uh system we don't understand. There are folks that are waiting um asylum and have their case heard and escape escaping from war or famine or you name it, all kind of horrible things to come here uh for safety. Uh you know, they might not have a status, but guess what? They do have a social security, they do have a work permit? There's a pathway for them to to work while their case is pending.

one thing that I think this came out of in terms of the the ordinance that Councilmember Chavez is bringing forward was also in response to the work that we did around the civil rights ordinance that actually covers exactly what you're talking about. And we recognized there was a need to update and strengthen it, and we did that last May. So, we do have as a result of that ordinance where people can reach out if they are facing that level of discrimination.

Um there's a change to the definition of non-shelter placement from a generic stabilization bed to a more specific hospital detox or mental health hold. Um I think that's fine for us to be more clear, but does that change or make any difference to how you report outcomes and will it increase staff time to be able to do this kind of reporting?

We have to still do some evaluation of what that would mean. That's currently data that we do not have access to either through the county or through any of their partners in terms of how many people exit homelessness or unsheltered homelessness through detox or any of these other avenues that are identified. Um and due to HIPAA and other protections, that's kind of a barrier that we aren't able to overcome at at the moment.

I know that seems like a small change, but it could have a pretty large impact on the reporting that's is required by this ordinance. Don't we clear single tents pretty frequently, maybe even trespassing somebody off a property?

I believe that specific change was to align the ordinance definition with what our operational definition definition has been. So, when we do have instances where there's a single tent, we would consider that an encampment as well, and we would report on those situations as well. So, we do that already.

So, under our zoning code, we have the ability to essentially pass an interim ordinance that would put a moratorium on um on it essentially the it would allow us to pass an interim ordinance that would regulate, restrict, or prohibit the establishment or expansion of use development or project uh with respect to our zoning code and under our code of ordinances, um the effective date of the uh the moratorium does actually get triggered once uh the introduction of the interim ordinance is is passed by this body.

I think a blanket moratorium um is really not the solution. It's a blunt tool that we have right now. And I think overall it is already sending unclear signals to the market about what Minneapolis is doing. And it's really failing to distinguish about what might be different about data centers in an urban small market like Minneapolis that has many office conversions that need to happen and be repurposed either for housing or other business uses versus large-scale development and concerns that we're seeing where you know huge facilities are being built in Monticello, Rosemount, Farmington.

My intention was to have some deliberate deliberative conversations and await for the state legislative cycle to conclude in which they're discussing data centers right now and then have an introduction with language with our staff to talk to. Councilmember Shafer, while I appreciate your comments, it would have been really appreciated if you had reached out to my office and had a conversation with me about your concerns.

I think ending debate and a conversation about the impact of data centers and the water usage that they take from our community and the devastating impact when it comes to environmental injustice that data centers have and to decide to not have that debate any further would just be not okay. So, I would be I will be voting against this motion to return to author.

You know, telephones work both ways and had the authors talked to uh Council Members who work in downtown to explain uh what the effect of this has, I took three calls last week of from people who are concerned about selling their buildings in the value that dropped. We see the best example in the world of this uh $235 million sale compared to a $30 million uh assessed value. That's what we need to do with our buildings.