Cam Gordon

And I'm joined by my co-hosts.

I'm Cam Gordon, former teacher and former Minneapolis City Council member for Ward 2, where I still live in the Seward neighborhood.

My claim to fame is serving on the City Council for four terms or 16 years with the amazing, wonderful, intelligent, and good-hearted...

I'm Robin Garwood.

I work for Cam in City Hall, and I currently live in St. Paul.

So I want to just start with a kind of a quick summary of like what's on the table.

And then I want to zoom out a little bit to some national context, just because I think there's a little danger of getting like too zoomed in on Minneapolis here, because there really is, I think, a bigger moment that's happened, a policy shift around the country and also some some trends around the country that are shaping the debate and how we should think about it here.

So Jacob didn't really come up with that one necessarily either, or it wasn't even created by city government, but it certainly got support of city government.

that really got us in the mind of maybe we should talk about this thing this kind of recurring regular feature of american local governance i am jesse mortensen we're recording in my home here in standish south minneapolis i've lived in minneapolis for over a decade done politics locally for a long time mostly as a volunteer working on campaigns getting signatures stuff like that and i'm joined by my co-host

I'm Cam Gordon, live in the Seward neighborhood, born and raised in Minneapolis.

I was a Montessori teacher for years and also served on the Minneapolis City Council for four terms for Ward 2 with my esteemed colleague.

I'm Robin Garwood.

I was Cam's policy aide for that entire time, and I currently live in St. Paul in Maygart.

Well, public hearings, they certainly happen.

They happen regularly.

Yeah, that's a great direction to go.

Don't forget the Hennepin County and Minneapolis public schools levies.

According to Cam Gordon, writing in the new online publication Hennepin Herald, County Administrator Jody Wintland has proposed a $2.993 billion budget that includes an 8.15% increase in total property taxes.

The proposal responds to reduce state and federal funding.

Public testimony included calls to maintain library service which faces shortened hours, to expand pollution testing at the Hennepin Energy Recovery Center and to scrutinize the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office whose budget has grown 30% since 2020.

One thing we've learned is that getting someone elected is, that's oftentimes what Pete Greens think about.

And Cam Gordon, who spoke at the A&M talked a lot about this.

Greens need to think also a lot about what we do when we get someone elected.

And this is kind of a lesson in that it takes a lot of meetings and a lot of work to stay in touch with someone you've gotten elected.