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What’s making news in Minneapolis, reported by the Star Tribune’s team of city reporters. Send news tips to james.shiffer@startribune.com.

Assistant Police Chief Janeé Harteau takes to YouTube to invite people downtown

Posted by: Matt McKinney under Public safety, Urban living Updated: May 25, 2012 - 3:04 PM

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With summer bearing down on us, Assistant police Chief Janeé Harteau takes a few minutes in a Youtube video to calm everyone's nerves about downtown crime. She makes the point that lots of people come and go safely. She also gives a general overview of police resources concentrated in the heart of the city.

It's an unusually public statement from the police, and could be a sign of what's to come from Harteau, who is the mayor's choice to succeed outgoing Chief Tim Dolan when he retires at year's end. When polled earlier this month, a majority of City Council members supported the nomination. Harteau has also been behind the department's push into social media.

To put summer crime in context, last year at this time a series of downtown shootings left several people in the hospital and sparked a conversation about public safety that ultimately lead to the closure of Karma, a nightclub that police deemed the source of several outbreaks of violence. The club shut down last fall. So far this year, no club has been singled out as especially problematic.

Full council approves single-sort recycling

Posted by: Jane Friedmann under Urban living Updated: May 25, 2012 - 5:51 PM

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The full City Council and Mayor R.T. Rybak approved a plan on Friday to move forward with a single-sort recycling system for the city. The plan had previously been approved by the Transportation and Public Works subcommittee.

The council directed public works staff to hash out the details, including sources of financing and a plan to communicate changes to residents prior to the roll out of the new system sometime next year.

The switch from seven-sort recycling to single-sort has the potential to almost double the amount of waste Minneapolis residents recycle, from 18.1 percent to 32 percent, studies suggest. This is mainly due to the ease of placing all recyclables in one container, thus encouraging current non-recyclers to participate and current recyclers to increase their contribution.

The city says that the single-sort system would work well with a possible expansion of recycling to include multi-unit housing and to add organics recycling at some point.

Click here to read the public works department's recommendation to the city council.

Click here to read a 47-page report commissioned by the city that compared single-sort recycling with dual-sort.

Stadium gets final sign-off

Posted by: Eric Roper Updated: May 25, 2012 - 1:01 PM

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The Minneapolis City Council gave final approval Friday morning to funding a new Vikings stadium in downtown Minneapolis, ending an arduous legislative process that has taken decades to resolve.

Friday's approval, on a vote of 7-6, followed a preliminary vote Thursday afternoon. No votes changed. Mayor R.T. Rybak celebrated with a swig of Grain Belt beer out of a horn in his office.

“I feel obviously incredibly happy to have this over," Rybak said. "This has been a bruising fight. I feel in my gut a little bit like I imagine the Vikings feel after a win. You’re happy you won, but you’ve got to go sit in the hot tub and take care of the bruises for a little bit.”

Up next, the city must create an implementation committee and the mayor must appoint two members to a new stadium authority.

The total city subsidy will be about $309 million for construction and operations, or $678 million when accounting for interest over the life of the deal.

The stadium will be built on the existing Metrodome site in downtown Minneapolis. The city's subsidy provides the means to pay debt and renovate the city-owned Target Center.

“It’s one of those tough decisions that you need every generation or so to keep a city moving forward," Rybak said. "But its also based on … something I’ve had to deal with from the start, which is to clean up the city’s finances, and I think we did that.”

Council members spent Friday morning issuing final statements on the bill, following hours of similar debate on Thursday. Opponents said it violates the charter and is not a wise economic decision.

"This is too much public cost for not enough public benefit," said Council Member Elizabeth Glidden. "That is the simplest way to state this.”

(Pictured: A vikings fan pours Mayor R.T. Rybak a beer in the mayor's office following the vote.)

Derus considering run for Hennepin County Board

Posted by: Kevin Duchschere under People and neighborhoods, Politics and government Updated: May 24, 2012 - 6:55 PM

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Opportunity is knocking and while John Derus hasn’t yet opened the door, he’s listening.

The former Hennepin County Board Chair, a powerhouse on the commission for 17 years, said Thursday that he’s thinking about jumping into the race for the County Board seat being vacated by outgoing Commissioner Mark Stenglein.

Redistricting has taken Derus, who lives in north Minneapolis, out of the First District represented by Board Chair Mike Opat – the man who unseated Derus 20 years ago in an upset – and put him into Stenglein’s Second District, which now includes all of the North Side.

Derus, 72, is an executive with Running Aces Harness Park in Anoka County.

Seven candidates plan to run for the seat, including five who have filed this week. Derus has until June 5, when filing closes, to decide. The primary election, which will narrow the field to two, is Aug. 14.

“I have received some support from prominent people who have asked me” to run, Derus said. “I’m thinking of it.”

If Derus gets into the race, it would set up a rematch with state Sen. Linda Higgins, who captured the DFL endorsement for the county board seat last weekend. Higgins narrowly defeated Derus for the Senate in 1996, a race that Derus said he lost because the Star Tribune mistakenly published his picture with an unrelated story on charity fraud.

Derus has DFL and labor ties, although he has run before without party endorsement.

Besides Higgins, candidates who have filed for the job are Leslie Davis, a perennial candidate who ran for govenor in the 2010 Republican primary; Steve Dehler, a Hennepin County correctional officer and former Republican legislator who is running as an independent; small-business owner Tonia Johnson, a DFLer who says she's running as an independent Democrat; and DFLer Blong Yang, an attorney and investigator for the Minneapolis Civil Rights Department.

Other declared candidates are Golden Valley City Council Member Paula Pentel, an independent, and DFLer Don Samuels of the Minneapolis City Council.

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