What did you want that to say?

I had three resolutions.

One was about, um, the general fund balance, which we've drawn down because of MPD overspending.

Um, and we are now risking bond, losing our bond ratings or being downgraded.

Um, so one was about that, that the gener- that the money we are raising in taxes should be in part used to strengthen our fiscal outlook by improving the general fund balance.

Um, the other one was, the second one was we should be collecting more non-tax revenues, um, because we can and it's, would relieve the burden on the taxpayer.

Um, and then the third one was the kinda most consequential, which was, you know, we kind of acknowledge that MPD is, is def- [laughs] defunding the rest of the city, uh, and that there, there's been accountability issues, and that we all need to do better about that for the sake of the taxpayer.

All right.

And maybe not all of it, but most of it.

Yeah, still popular.

It's something I've heard a good amount about getting emails about and stuff.

And I imagine it'll be something that they folks testify about tonight at the hearing.

But if I could, Jesse, I just want to go back to what you were saying about this framing of like, you know, is this the new permanent emergency or are we going to get through this rough patch and get to the future, brighter future? And I I think that's an important sort of thing.

grouping of questions to really think about, and it's a way I would love for people to be thinking about the budget this year and over the next couple years, which is that I ran on a platform of really enthusiastically supporting public investment and public services, but Being a champion of public services also requires being honest about where we're getting the value that we need and where we're succeeding or failing to resolve the challenges that we're facing.

And I think that I appreciate that the mayor was willing to go to bat for this large property tax increase, knowing that that's a very difficult thing politically to defend.

I think police sticks out as like what department have we dumped more and more money into over the last five years? Yeah.

What are you doing that is different from what the mayor did?

I think the main thing for me is unsheltered homelessness is the public safety, the vibrancy, the economic development challenge that we are facing.

When we hear about Minneapolis feeling dangerous, when we hear those bad things about Minneapolis, Yeah, we have crime, other cities have crime.

I think the thing that we have is a large and growing population of people who are struggling from a mix of mental health disorders, substance abuse disorders, and just poverty and homelessness that is making a lot of parts of the city feel uncomfortable, unsafe, making it sort of unappealing visually.

And that's a problem.

And I think that we have to acknowledge that that's a problem and that we need a solution to it.

And I think that a lot of people will say, well, that's more a federal thing, more a county thing.

There's one idea.

Is there any part of this shortfall that is tied to federal funding, maybe that is tied to us being a blue city, maybe that is tied to metro surge? And I ask that more specifically to be like, is this a sort of thing we just have to weather for the moment? And once there's a new administration, is this going to just kind of solve itself and we just have to get by? Or is this representative of a larger, more endemic problem for the Minneapolis budget?

The answer is yes to both.

I think the mayor presented his budget yesterday a little bit more in the line of, he said, we've got a couple of years to get through where maybe we're still experiencing the sharpest dip in the commercial real estate market.

um the the kind of lag of challenges downtown um we need to make these adjustments and then our budget will improve our outlook will improve and um i don't know exactly the impact of metro surge but i do think generally the city has not had like a booming couple of years you know really not since the pandemic um and so i think there's some sense uh it's i think it's an open question but a good one of How much should we be making permanent changes now to adjust to a reality of greater scarcity versus staying consistent in our investments and trusting that those investments will get us to a better place in the future? I think that's a really important question, and it's one that I'm thinking about a lot, for example, with regard to the park budget.

So the mayor proposed that the park levy, which is a separate levy, rather than fulfill their request for a five point six percent increase in their levy.

I think he proposed like two point three, something like that.

And so basically saying like, well, everyone's got to cut, you know, tighten their belts.

Do you see any of these pieces changing? And what do you expect to be the biggest points of argument?

Should we teach tax positivity in schools? We

should definitely teach tax positivity in schools and do more in basic civics.

And like, yeah, teaching what I would call a more neutral examination of society.

I can't believe I got to do it.

I got to talk about John Kenneth Galbraith real quick because I've been on a serious John Kenneth Galbraith kick.

He was a guy, he was an economist in the mid-20th century, and he basically said, for all of human history, we've operated with this material scarcity, that we don't have enough food, enough clothing, enough shelter for all the people that we have.

And then in the last 100 years or so, that changed.

I have to