Tevlin: Promises, promises; yet another 'equity' fix for north Minneapolis

The Minneapolis City Council agenda for Wednesday included what appeared to be an innocuous item, the kind of thing that is normally lauded and rubber-stamped with back pats all around.

The federal government has a load of money to give away for "Promise Zones," where cities are to use the money to help erase crime and poverty. Minneapolis was racing to get a piece of the action, and there were assurances that the Obama administration wanted some money to go to the Midwest, no doubt to spread the bounty for political gain.

Instead, what transpired was a feisty, overdue and refreshing discussion of what more money can actually do for the zone, in this case north Minneapolis, and bold questions about why programs already in place have not worked. A couple of council members suggested the allure of money could turn the area into a zone of broken promises instead.

On a council full of new faces, two veteran council members saw a plan they'd seen before, a plan that hasn't worked.

Council Member Lisa Goodman began the fireworks:

"This sounds exactly like what happened with the Enterprise Zone and the Empowerment Zone," Goodman said. "Everyone wants to get together, to change the outcomes, to move the ball, but nothing happens."

Goodman was referring to two big-money projects pointed at poor areas that did little to change economic equity or stop crime.

Goodman asked how much city staff time had been put into the grant proposal, and how much more was needed. Jay Stroebel, deputy city coordinator, said they didn't know.

"It's very frustrating," she said of Stroebel's response. Goodman continued: "I can't tell you how much time has gone into it, I can't tell you how much time will go into it. I can't tell you what the outcomes will be. I can't tell you how we are going to keep these promises. I can't tell you how much money it's going to be or what it's for."

Sometimes I just wish Goodman would say what she means. Eh-hem.

As for the goals of the grant proposal, vague statements about creating jobs, Goodman and Council President Barb Johnson had one excellent question: How?

"I feel like I'm signing on to something that isn't real," Goodman said.

"Let's do our job and encourage these other people to do their jobs and maybe we will see something happen," Johnson said. "Shame on us."

Johnson said that getting these grants "creates controversy. You dangle money out there and people get mad if they don't get some," she said in an interview. Nonprofits fight with each other over control and often the residents are left out, she said.

Johnson pointed out that as they create more boards and committees with the new money, hundreds of homes in north Minneapolis "are sitting there rotting! rotting!" due to the tornado and the foreclosure crisis.

I've read the city's draft of the proposal. I admit I am not the brightest bulb on the tree, but to me it's about as impenetrable as philosopher Martin Heidegger's "Being and Time." I still have no idea how this windfall would create as much as a janitorial job, except for maybe at one of the new committees.

It is filled with vague platitudes and swishy catchphrases. For example, the city will create, yes, another public body, this called the "Office of Equitable Outcomes," and something called the "Community Congress." All this work, of course, will be done by "stakeholders."

Johnson was particularly irritated that the process was far along without much input from the council. Mayor Betsy Hodges, who joined the council on Wednesday after it became clear things were not going as planned, had cited challenging inequity as one of the main goals in her mayoral campaign, so she has considerable skin in the Promise Zone.

And herein lies the rub. The city seems to think it can change a deeply ingrained economic system, which stretches from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, that has caused the biggest chasm ever between the very rich and the very poor. Best of luck with that.

After the meeting, Johnson talked about how few of the people who are trying to reshape north Minneapolis actually live there. Of the 150 who attended a forum on the Promise Zone, she said, "I'd be surprised if more than 10 lived there."

For Goodman, it got personal:

"I don't want to leave the City Council in retirement and know [we have] the exact same problems when I came in here 18 years ago, and have not moved the dial on equity at all," she said.

Goodman and Barb Johnson abstained.

"This is a big something we can do," Hodges said.

I think we can all agree on that, actually. This is a big something, all right.

jtevlin@startribune.com 612-673-1702