Minneapolis elections are next year. Time to start the debate about the city’s direction.

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Minneapolis has had a neo-socialist City Council for the last 11 months. What has it gotten us? Council action on a war half the planet away. Uber and Lyft minimum wages three times the state minimum and increased fares to everyone else. The magical thinking of removing Interstate Hwy. 94, as if none of the City Council members had ever gone to the suburbs. The magical thinking of closing HERC, the downtown garbage burner, when our recycling rate is 18%. The council telling businesses how to run because activists know better than business owners.

It is time to abandon the neo-socialist agenda and focus on basic services. Here are some ideas:

• More police and fewer ineffective safety programs: Four years of an anti-police public safety agenda has failed. This time last year, we had 56 homicides. So far this year, as of last week when this article was prepared for publication, there had been 64. I have had five crimes at my home this year. Yet it seems the City Council can’t throw enough money at every public safety idea except police. We need a lot more police officers to deter crime. More than the 580 we have now. More than the 730 minimum called for by the formula in the City Charter. More than the 950 we had in 2019. The problem? City Council members openly hostile to police. The police are imperfect, like any other human endeavor. We need a City Council that can support the police while still addressing their imperfections.

• Treatment over encampments: The city has refused to allow police to enforce laws against outdoor camping, arguing that people should stay outside until they move into free government housing. The problem? People choose addiction over housing. The result? A lot of dead people. In two weeks, six people were shot in encampments, three fatally. Dozens of overdose deaths. The city’s current approach is just plain cruel. We need a City Council that enforces laws, arrests people living on the streets and puts them into treatment, rather than letting them die in a tent. Treatment is housing.

• Wealth-building over wealth-bleeding housing: Renting makes people poor. Owning homes builds wealth. Yet almost all the city’s affordable housing programs are focused on rental. And it shows. While rents may have stayed stable, from 2019 to 2023 the cost of owning a house in Minneapolis increased 25%. We need a City Council focused on wealth-building homeownership, not wealth-bleeding rental housing.

• Affordability over burgeoning government: Socialism is expensive. My property taxes are slated to increase 12% next year, $600 I don’t have. In 2022, the city budget was $1.597 billion. In 2026, it is projected to be $1.905 billion. New sales taxes have made Minneapolis the most expensive place in the state to buy things. I can get more than 1% cash back just from shopping outside Minneapolis. There is no magic money tree — taxes and fees come from residents. Not one neo-socialist has proposed budget cuts. Instead, they want new funding sources to feed the maw of their social programs. The City Council is the worst thing for housing affordability in Minneapolis. We need a City Council that will focus on affordability by cutting, not increasing, government spending.

• Support, don’t harm, business: Socialists are, by definition, against capitalism. And it shows. Minneapolis lost more than 15,000 jobs from second quarter 2019 to second quarter 2024, almost 4.5%. The city’s response? A Labor Standards Board under which the City Council will dictate how businesses operate. Predictably, more businesses will leave. What do we need? A council dedicated to increasing well-paid jobs, helping grow the economy and freeing business to flourish.

• Electric vehicles over bike lanes: The City Council voted to close I-94, part of its everyone will walk, bike and take transit agenda. How is it going? Transit ridership has plummeted. Walking has declined and biking is too small a percentage of travel to matter. Yet the city is rebuilding its streets as if everyone is going to walk, bike or take transit. We need a City Council that takes the climate emergency seriously and builds infrastructure for a future of electric vehicles, not just bicycles and buses.

The elections are next year. The time to start talking about the city we want is now.

Carol Becker, of Minneapolis, is a college professor and data analyst. For 16 years she was a member of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation.