Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and the Minneapolis City Council are butting heads over the budget after the council approved a $1.5 million grant to save Agate Housing.
In an email to the City Council, Frey called the spending on the homeless advocacy organization Agate Housing irresponsible. Frey said in the email that funding Agate comes at the cost of reducing the North Commons Park fund by around $350,000.
“The $1.5 million you set aside is not free money, it must come from somewhere,” Frey said in the email. “Because of this Council action, several City departments and services will be affected.”
Dushani Dye, the Minneapolis chief financial officer, mirrored Frey’s statement and said the consequences of the City Council’s actions would be felt in other areas of the budget.
“The Council’s action either cuts funding for North Commons or cuts City staff,” Dye said. “There is no way around it.”
The City Council responded to these claims in a statement written by Council Vice President Aisha Chughtai (Ward 10) and Council Member Emily Koski (Ward 11). Koski said that the mayor’s comments call the financial data into question.
“The City’s Quarterly Financial Reports are how we understand the City and our department’s actual spending; they are touted by the Administration as the best source of budgetary and fiscal information,” Koski said in the statement.
In response to Frey’s budgetary concerns, Chughtai and Koski launched a legislative directive to investigate the city budget. The directive would look into the second quarter financial report, current state financial practices and overall financial performance.
Council Member Jason Chavez (Ward 9) said he hopes the directive will find answers on the city’s true financial outlook.
“We’re inquiring into the current budget process because it’s clear that either the Mayor’s administration is retaliating against North Minneapolis and the City Council for saving a shelter, or his quarter two financial report was incorrect and inaccurate,” Chavez said.
Chavez pushed back against the mayor’s claims that the council ignored budgetary concerns when they approved the Agate Housing Funding. He added that his office and other City Council members looked over the budgets before deciding on the resolution.
“When we received the quarter two report, it showed us that there was going to be projected surpluses in many departments,” Chavez said. “And the action the City Council took was bold, it was important, and it was needed to ensure that we can save a shelter from permanent closing. So, we end up with surpluses all the time, and to pretend that the money is not there is just unfair.”
Former State of Minnesota Finance Commissioner Jay Kiedrowski, a former finance professor at the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, said if the legislative directive finds any discrepancies in the financial report then the proposed budgets could be revised to match the findings of the report.
Despite the legislative directive and disagreements over Agate Housing, Chavez said Frey and the City Council can still work together to combat homelessness.
“We would love to come together with the Mayor,” Chavez said. “I think it’s important that we show Minneapolis residents that we are serious about addressing unsheltered homelessness at a time when homeless shelters are being attacked. We need to show solidarity. But it’s hard to create that solidarity when you’re pushing back against a shelter. It doesn’t make sense.”
The results of the legislative directive will come back on Oct. 15.