City Hall Monitor

The mayor had said so, and if you closed your eyes the morning after the RNC and let the intoxicating hint of normalcy in the air wash away memories of the week, everything did seem like it might be all right again — even at Ramsey County’s Law Enforcement Center on Lafayette Avenue just east [...]

Minneapolis City Council Members Gary Schiff and Cam Gordon issued a call this afternoon for an independent investigation of police actions during the Republican National Convention (RNC). Read their full statement below the jump.
Today’s call follows two earlier statements on RNC policing from city council corridors in Minneapolis and St. Paul. On Tuesday, Gordon and [...]

The Minneapolis School Board is poised to grant a low-bid, high-six-figures contract for liaison police services to the Minneapolis Police Department. It means a switch from the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board’s independent police force, which has provided cops to the schools for the last five years. The move puts cops who serve under Minneapolis [...]

The Minneapolis park board’s conflicting corporate obligations put vendors at its bike tour event in an impossible catch-22. Under the parks’ current beverage contract, vendors at Minneapolis parks can serve only Coke-brand Dasani water—but the bike event’s sponsorship rules mandate only Chippewa water. In fact, vendors will get kicked out for serving the brand of [...]

People in town for the Republican National Convention will be able to get event information, tourist tips, traffic updates and travel directions by calling Minneapolis’s 311 service on their cell phones, if arrangements currently underway are successful.
The idea is for delegates, media and others visiting the Twin Cities for the RNC to have one easy-to-reach [...]

It turns out that 4 a.m. won’t be the last call after all at most places during the Republican National Convention—notwithstanding the still-vivid word-image (courtesy St. Paul City Council Member Dave Thune) of over-imbibed GOP lobbyists’ late-night spew sullying the streets of the Capital City.
No, if that happens, it’ll have to be due to the [...]

The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board appears to have strayed from its obligations under a lucrative but restrictive contract with Coca-Cola.
The park board signed the $440,000 contract with Coke (pdf) five years ago, promising to sell only Coke products and not sell competitors’ products. Yet drinks from competitors such as Pepsi and Red Bull are [...]

Eight months into a merger that was sold as a bailout of Minneapolis’ library system, a budget hole threatens to swallow Hennepin County’s bookmobile and other library services. That’s got newspaper editorialists wringing hands that are still smarting from merger backslaps, and library leaders ready to wring cash from naming rights—something St. Paul’s already doing [...]

No one knows how many protesters will descend on the Twin Cities for the Republican convention—the most common estimate is in the range of 50,000 to 100,000—but one thing’s for sure: Many if not most of them will have no place to sleep at night. And the Minneapolis police want them to know that the [...]

Minneapolis parks will, for a fee, let you book a picnic shelter to enjoy for an afternoon. Or, if you’re among a select group of concessionaires, the park board can help your company stay off the county’s property tax books for years and enjoy another kind of shelter. Six businesses with contracts to operate on [...]