My Minnpost Festival Q&A Session is Now Online

In case you missed it, I gave an hour-long Q&A blab at the recent Minnpost Festival, where I was surprised and flattered to find people who actually wanted to ask questions about my Cityscape column and our Twin Cities. The whole day was great; the Tina Smith interview with Kara Swisher and the discussion with New Yorker television critic Emily Nussbaum were particularly excellent. 

And then there was me, too. Luckily, Minnpost video'd the whole thing, so you can watch it at your leisure. It's preserved for posterity, FWIW...

20th Anniversary of This Blog

Believe it or not... I started this blog 20 years ago today. It's still the best career move I've made, as writing publicly about cities and sidewalks turned out to guide almost every other path that's led me to where I'm at today: pretty contentedly writing and teaching about cities all day long. 

Yes, this Target; I spend a lot of time there now.

One of the great things about having done this for so long is I have a track-record and archive on which to look back. For example, one of the first public hearings I ever attended was about the new "Super Target" being planned for University Avenue. 

I went to the meeting where urbanist advocates were pushing to force Target to build something, anything along the street frontage of University Avenue.

Here's part of my decidedly unprofessional description of the 2006 meeting:

Then the two Toms got into the action. Yes, there were two Toms representing the Target Corporation. The first Tom was an architect, had grey gelled hair with a nice black suit and some fancy artist (architect?) glasses. The second Tom was "folksy," with a beige sportcoat and brown penny loafers, paunchy with male pattern baldness. After the long powerpointed introduction by the neighborhood advocate talking about fancy architecture, the two Toms had a few little tagboard illustrations of plans for the new SuperTarget.

Here's a fairly accurate rendition:

_________
|________|


So, they had these pictures of a big box Target and were trying to point out all the "amenities," like a sidewalk and a landscaped tree and a path through the parking lot, etc. It was pretty funny.

... The funniest part was this one dyed-haired old woman who had walked the block or two from her house to the meeting, and raised her hand duringg the Q & A and said, "Why do you have all these flowers and trees in the parking lot? They're just taking up space. Nobody will see them. I don't want flowers and trees in my parking lot."

I think about this experience, and the continuing problem of big box stores in the Midway, quite a bit. At the time, then-Council Member Debbie Montgomery assured me that Target would build something soon along University Avenue, and I remember her every time I pass the Target (I.e. every day) and stare at the vacant empty street-front asphalt. It's nice to have a long memory when you're contemplating city politics.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I don't have nearly enough time to update this regularly, but still keep it dear to my heart.

Opt-out Transit Agencies' High Overhead

High floor buses I can understand. High overhead unnecessary transit agencies are a bridge too far for me. 

A few months ago I wrote about why I think the opt-out bus agencies -- mainly Mississippi Valley Transit (MTVA) and Southwest Transit -- should be disbanded. Or, at the very least, the impending change in funding structure should give leverage to state officials to more closely scrutinize the frustrating, fragmentary arrangement. 

You can read it here, but the gist is thus:

The downsides of an opt-out system center on lack of efficiency, scale and planning conflict. As a whole, multiple overlapping government agencies are an expensive solution for “local” concerns, and the opt-out agencies have a lot of duplicative overhead. For example, instead of one branding or ad campaign, you have five. It’s the same for websites, apps or other other administrative positions that scale effectively, like HR offices or executive leadership. Today, all those costs are currently multiplied five-fold across the region.  

Since writing the piece, I received an interesting email from a Minnpost reader named Nick who had been digging into salary information, something I also tried to do without success. (Agency budgets and information is really hard to find, as the public board meetings don't have thorough minutes available.) 

Anyway, they did a public data request for top transit agency leadership salaries at MVTA versus Metro Transit and came up with the following chart:

This is 2024 public information.

I just want to point out that the (IMO excellent) GM Lesley Kanderas of Metro Transit is overseeing a staff of over 3,200 people that provides 47.5 million rides a year. She made $245,842 in 2024. The respective numbers for the CEO of MVTA are around 35 employees*, 1.6 million rides, and $326,819 dollars a year.

This is not to mention the other folks running the show at MVTA. I think this speaks for itself.

* I can't find an exact number, but it's between 30-40. I think they contract out bus drivers staffing to avoid unionization.

Q&A Discussion at Minnpost Festival Tomorrow

Minnpost Festival is tomorrow in downtown Minneapolis, and I'm going to have a Q&A discussion about cities and the upcoming election -- and anything else people want to talk about. There's a great list of famous guests including Governor Walz, AG Ellison, Senator Smith, and more. 

Then there's me. I'm part of a "breakout session" at 3:15 and will be hosted by our new editor Leah Fabel. Hope to see you there! Bring any questions you have about the future of our Twin Cities.

You're Not From Here #5 on Wednesday 10/1 at the Black Hart

 

Everyone's favorite show about transplants, folks who somehow moved to the Twin Cities and stuck around. I'm hosing You're Not From Here, Are You: A Show for Transplants this Wednesday at the Black Hart of St. Paul, on University Avenue. 

This month, come and hear from some fabulous guests. Anna from Crawfordsville, Kelly from Auburn, and Teressa from a bunch of places including Moscow (the one in Russia, not the one in Idaho)!

For those of you paying attention, that's a double dose of Indiana, followed by a deep dive into post-Cold War Eastern Europe. It's a lot of fun. And it's free!

• What: hour-long show about people from places
• When: 7pm on October 1st
• Where: Black Hart
• Why: learn stuff and meet people

See you then!