Minneapolis Park Board election a referendum on expanding social agenda

Minneapolis voters will have their first chance to choose a new Park Board after members invited large homeless encampments into parks last summer, only to revoke sanctuary a month after dangerous conditions prompted condemnation from neighbors.

The saga incurred lawsuits from those who supported the encampments, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, as well as those who opposed them, including the Friends of Minneapolis Parks. The Park Board has spent $1 million to date on costs associated with encampments and lawsuits.

Four of nine commissioners — former Park Board President Brad Bourn, Chris Meyer, Kale Severson and Vice President LaTrisha Vetaw — are not seeking re-election. A slate of challengers has denounced the board as dysfunctional, calling for refocusing the parks' resources around its core mission of environmental stewardship and recreation for all.

Competitive open races all but guarantee a cultural shift among the polarizing body that governs the 6,800-acre, award-winning park system.

In a forum this month, the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association asked candidates how they would deal with camps in the future.

Becky Alper, the only candidate for District 3 in attendance, said the board lacked the capacity to provide dignified housing for the homeless. "Families with kids don't want to be at parks where they might encounter needles," she said.

District 3 incumbent AK Hassan, who has the lowest meeting attendance of all commissioners, did not participate. Neither did challenger Mohamoud Hassan.

Five of seven candidates for the three citywide seats have also stated they wouldn't repeat the encampment experiment of last summer.

"I learned all too well the pain of this issue," recalled incumbent Meg Forney. "At Powderhorn, there was a 14-year-old who was raped."

But incumbent Londel French and Tom Olsen, a communications specialist for the Minnesota House DFL, said they would welcome camps again in a time of crisis.

"We have a responsibility, as the largest landlord in the city of Minneapolis … to advocate for the folks who don't have housing right now," said French, with Olsen echoing his promise to provide space in parks as a "stopgap."

Several challengers have said they are running to turn around the perception that an overly politicized Park Board is trying to take on more social responsibilities than it has the skills to execute well.

They include District 2 candidate Becka Thompson, one of 26 north Minneapolis residents who recently wrote a letter imploring Gov. Tim Walz to deploy the National Guard to deal with neighborhood gun violence.

Thompson is a cousin of DFL-endorsed Park Board President Jono Cowgill. She said her politics are vastly different from Cowgill's. She has "gotten in his face" about his decisions, but they've always managed to grab beers afterward, she said.

Also running in District 2 are DFL-endorsed Eric Moran and longtime North Side youth coach Mike Shelton. Shelton and his running partner, at-large candidate Charles Rucker, have also called on the Park Board to stay in its lane of improving access to recreation.

Cowgill is defending his District 4 seat against Elizabeth Shaffer, president of Friends of Thomas Lowry Park.

In a departure from the moral debates dominating Park Board politics in recent years, the League of Women Voters asked this year's candidates their understanding of the Parks for All comprehensive plan, the Strategic Racial Equity Action Plan and 20-Year Neighborhood Park Plan to gauge their proficiency in the ongoing logistical work of park staff.

In a forum for the heavily watched District 6 race to replace Bourn, candidates Cathy Abene, Bob Fine, Risa Hustad and Barb Schlaefer vied over their solutions for long-standing user complaints, including disrepair throughout the system.

Hustad, a bicycling advocate who wants to study the transportation methods people use to get to parks, chastised the agency for failing to replace any of the trees uprooted by the 2011 tornado in north Minneapolis. "You can look at satellite images from yesterday and see that the urban tree canopy has remained absent in the areas where the tornado went through," she said.

Park staff have replanted all boulevard and park trees destroyed by the tornado, according to park communication staff, although it will take years for new plantings to grow.

The Park Board and Metropolitan Council also surveyed Minneapolis residents about how they get to parks in 2019 and 2021. The park survey found 74% of respondents walked.

Fine, a former park commissioner of 16 years and a multisport youth coach for several decades, claimed he has seen "this real steady decline in recreation," especially since he left the board at the end of 2013.

The number of park users who attended drop-in and registered recreation programs almost doubled from 2016 to 2019, before COVID-19 restrictions kicked in, according to staff.

Abene, a civil engineer, complained the parks' asset management system was "30-40 years behind the state of the art" because it does not include parkway repairs in its capital improvement plans. Schlaefer, a former communications specialist, said, "It's astounding that the Park Board doesn't seem to have a plan for maintenance. … We can just look around and see."

Minneapolis Public Works, not the Park Board, is in charge of parkway paving. The city chooses which sections to pave based on its 20-year street funding plan.

A vast capital improvement program informed by a racial equity matrix guides the rehabilitation of park infrastructure with a focus on historically marginalized parts of the city, meaning projects in wealthier areas must wait their turn for public money. The Asset Management Department has a $30.6 million budget and 200 full-time employees.

Schlaefer acknowledged that some responses candidates gave under pressure at the forum shortchanged the intricacies of operating a massive park system. "I know all funding is hard to get, but sometimes ... there's so much excitement around the new amenity or asset that those long-term costs aren't always factored into the budget," she said.

Susan Du • 612-673-4028