City attorney and Depression-era precedent clear legal path for charter amendment on parks levy

Bolstered by past precedent and a fresh oral opinion by the city attorney's office, backers of a potential charter amendment to fund Minneapolis neighborhood parks say there's a clear legal path to put it on the ballot.

Assistant City Attorney Burt Osborne told the city's Charter Commission Wednesday that a charter amendment to authorize a levy increase for parks is a "proper topic" for a charter amendment.

"That's pretty significant," Brian Rice, an attorney for the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, said.

The legal guidance followed an informal advisory in February by the city attorney's office that said that a non-charter referendum to raise the levy was not authorized under either state law or the city charter. It also suggested that a referendum on issuing bonds for parks as a possible avenue.

But the Park Board doesn't want to borrow the money and pay extra interest charges but rather levy the increased tax annually. Moreover, borrowed money couldn't be used for stepped-up maintenance such as more timely mowing and pruning as the board wants.

Independently, at least two groups recently uncovered a past precedent supporting a charter amendment on raising taxes for parks. In 1937, city voters overwhelmingly rejected just such a proposal months after a setback in the national economy that followed the initial gains of the New Deal during the Great Depression.

Voting on charter amendments to raise taxes for city libraries, schools and even police hiring occurred periodically from 1921 to 1966. That's the last year with such a proposal, when voters approved an increase for the library board. But voters approved a $140 million bond issue for libraries in a non-charter referendum in 2000.

The Park Board's initial proposal this year to City Hall was that the City Council allow voters to decide a non-charter levy referendum to raise at least $15 million annually for park rehabilitation and operations. Alarmed by a potential 5 percent increase in the city levy, council members Barbara Johnson and Lisa Goodman countered with an $11 million plan to raise the levy by 1 percent and finance the rest of the cost from other sources in the city budget.

Mayor Betsy Hodges has opposed both of those proposals, and has said that parks financing has to be considered more deliberately in the context of financing street repairs and other city priorities. She and budget chairman John Quincy proposed spending $10 million annually on parks and $20 million for street repaving, both for 10 years.