A Minneapolis City Council decision on how to proceed with a new Third Precinct police station might not happen until after the November elections, and perhaps not until a new council is seated next year.

That's the potential timeline emerging from the protracted back-and-forth between Mayor Jacob Frey and the council over how to replace the abandoned station at Lake Street and Minnehaha Avenue, torched in May 2020 after George Floyd's murder.

The latest twist: As the City Council approaches a potential up-or-down vote next week on Frey's preferred location at E. 26th Street and Minnehaha Avenue, a group of key council members is pushing back.

While Frey wants a swift vote from the council to approve the site, the pushback could further slow a process that is already tying the city in knots.

Frey expressed frustration with the process in an interview Wednesday.

"From the very beginning, I've been trying to get to seven [of the council's 13] votes," he said. "Our administration has tried to do everything possible to give council both the information and the political cover to make a decision."

The pushback comes from three council members whose wards are served by Third Precinct police officers. It takes the form not of a counterproposal, but a demand for details from Frey's administration. Some of those details don't appear to exist yet.

Council members were expected Wednesday to receive Frey's formal request for approval of a vacant city-owned lot at 2600 Minnehaha Av. as the site for a new station.

That's not good enough, according to Council Member Emily Koski, who is co-sponsoring the pushback with colleagues Jason Chavez and Andrew Johnson.

"We need more than just an address," Koski said in an interview. "Just as a person building a new home, we need a plan. We need critical information."

The trio's formal demand for details — an item that would need to be approved by the council to be binding — includes the following, according to drafts shared with the Star Tribune. Here's what they want to know more about:

Frey's proposal for a so-called "Community Safety Center" at 2600 Minnehaha Av. It's unclear if any such proposal exists. While Frey and others on multiple sides of the debate over policing have endorsed the concept of a comprehensive community safety center — a facility that would house not only police but other public services as well — no one has offered details.
The cost of the new station. A city analysis estimated it would cost $22 million to $26 million to build on the Minnehaha site. That figure doesn't appear to be detailed enough to satisfy the request, which calls for a fiscal analysis and cost breakdowns for site preparation and construction. Renovating the vacant building at Lake and Minnehaha would cost an estimated $15 million to $18 million, though that location has been rejected by the council.
Analyses of every site that city officials have considered for the precinct headquarters, which number more than two dozen. Officials have released information on previous sites in various reports and statements, but they've never presented a packaged proposal to the council.
A projected timeline, and a plan for "any anticipated public engagement" — a sticky subject. A Frey-led process earlier this year included public meetings, but some critics assailed it as flawed because it offered only two options — 2600 Minnehaha and the former station at Lake and Minnehaha. Frey backed away from them before recently pressing for 2600 Minnehaha.

Lack of consensus

The demand for information by the three council members carries a deadline for Frey's administration to produce the information: Dec. 7. If it takes that long, it would be well past the Nov. 7 election, when all 13 council seats are on the ballot.

It would also give the current council just one meeting to deal with the issue before its next regular meeting on Jan. 25 — after the newly-elected council is seated.

That doesn't sit well with Council Vice President Linea Palmisano, who said she believes the council has received enough information to choose a location now.

"We'll have a lot of opportunities to weigh in on details later, but for now we need to choose a site," Palmisano said. "We've eliminated all the other options."

She said she plans to press for a yes-or-no vote on 2600 Minnehaha, Frey's site choice, on Tuesday. That's when the council is scheduled to meet as a committee and take up both the mayor's request and the directive put forward by Koski, Chavez and Johnson.

Those three council members, however, are saying they need a full proposal and vision before moving ahead with any of it. While they make up a minority of the council's 13 members, their apparent allegiance on this issue makes it difficult to see how Frey can amass the needed seven votes to move ahead.

The lack of consensus on the council on what to do about the Third Precinct station is striking.

Council Member Robin Wonsley, the council's most outspoken critic of the police and Frey, rejected the mayor's site choice outright, claiming it "has already been conclusively rejected by hundreds of residents and the City Council." That's not correct; though there was a push by some members to reject 2600 Minnehaha, the council has not done so.

Council Member LaTrisha Vetaw, generally an ally of Frey, penned an opinion piece in Tuesday's Star Tribune in which she called for re-establishing the station at the charred Lake and Minnehaha building that was overrun by protesters and remains cordoned off by razor wire. That was a reversal for Vetaw, who in July joined the majority in a 12-1 vote calling for police never to return there. Vetaw now says she "made a mistake" and regrets that vote.