The Minneapolis City Council weighs in on several consequential measures.
July 16
Thursday’s city council meeting was difficult to predict. Ward 10 Council Member Aisha Chughtai was on medical leave, leaving the council with 12 members present. Her absence may have pressured Ward 6 Council Member Jamal Osman to reconsider his vote on the Skydio drone pilot measure he co-authored with Ward 4 Council Member Latrisha Vetaw. Between co-authoring and Thursday’s vote, Osman decided Skydio’s client base was unacceptable. His vote against his own measure resulted in a 6-6 tie, which meant it did not pass.
Skydio
Vetaw introduced the pilot as an alternative policing method her Ward 4 constituents wanted. After 2.5 years of work, the pilot would cost nothing for 75 days while the city assessed data—with no clarity on pricing afterward. Two police-operated drones would respond to the most serious 911 calls (Tier 0 & 1). Of 33,000 Ward 4 calls in 2025, over 5,000 could have had drone first responders. For half the council, possible lives saved outweighed privacy and abuse risks. Jacob Frey made a rare chamber appearance to support the pilot, saying the “people of Minneapolis shouldn’t be collateral damage for geopolitical concerns.” Rainville noted a drone might have saved Officer Mitchell’s life. Shaffer highlighted rapid Narcan delivery and faster response to lake distress calls. Voting yes: Vetaw, Warren, Whiting, Rainville, Shaffer, and Palmisano.
Opposition was passionate. Beyond surveillance concerns over peaceful protests, suspicion centered on Skydio itself. The company holds contracts with the Israeli Defense Force and ICE/DHS. Osman explained his reversal by referencing Palestinian children killed by the IDF. Another factor was distrust of the MPD. Chowdhury and Wonsley worried internal procedures would fail to prevent abuse and said the MPD has a poor track record of holding officers accountable (Facebook surveillance was cited as an example). Chavez referenced a lawsuit against Skydio in Chula Vista, CA. Voting no: Chavez, Wonsley, Payne, Stevenson, Chowdhury, and Osman.
Were it not for Skydio’s contracts with the IDF and DHS, this pilot likely passes. Other cities nationwide and in Minnesota use Skydio for first responder programs. The debate raised important questions: What data proves effectiveness? What would count as success? The discussion revealed the MPD already operates drones with a trained operator unit in place. If they have the equipment and expertise, why Skydio? Why now? The MPD might be able to proceed with its own first responder program.
Heritage Park Relocation
This topic received detailed coverage during Tuesday’s Committee of the Whole. Few questions were asked, but controversy remained. Wonsley pushed for approval of a measure requiring a memo outlining ways to recoup the $2.5 million drawn from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund for relocating 686 residents. Warren opposed the memo, wanting focus on helping residents rather than parceling out blame. Yet Warren herself blamed Public Housing Authority Director Abdi Warsame. (The NAACP has called for his termination.)
The council approved both: funding and a memo on cost recovery. Emergency Management Director Rachel Sayre explained the relocation process. As of yesterday, the Heritage Park Coordination Group was established to coordinate efforts across departments and government levels. The relocation is being treated as an emergency—the first major test for Sayre since her June 26 confirmation. She told the council the effort exceeds one department’s capacity. The funding vote was 12-0.
Lyndale Avenue Reconstruction
On another day, this measure would have dominated. It passed 8-4, opposed by Warren, Shaffer, Rainville, and Vetaw. The county plan was adopted: bike lanes, reduced parking, removed trees. Amendments passed aimed to reduce construction impact, including extended work hours. Chowdhury advocated for “whimsy” like a “beers with bulldozers” program to keep the area vital during construction. She said construction needn’t become the area’s death knell. Business owners, represented by Shaffer, disagreed. No dedicated funding exists to help corridor businesses survive. Wonsley noted $900,000 allocated for Hennepin Avenue businesses went unspent.
The timeline proved decisive. Federal funds require a finalized plan by June 2027. Chavez and others flagged the risk to that funding. Warren raised operational concerns. She said emergency vehicles struggle when traffic backs up (the Annunciation shooting illustrates the problem). Others felt the design addresses these issues. Construction won’t begin until 2028, but business owners will likely seek exits starting today. Lyndale appears headed for Hennepin’s fate.
Final Thoughts
Council divisions continue to harden and seem to be a microcosm of larger Democratic Party friction. Those voting for the drone pilot likely support Representative Angie Craig for Senate; opponents favor Lt. Governor Peggy Flanagan. Both candidates are spending millions on negative advertising ahead of August 11’s primary. Whether they can unite afterward remains unclear.
The council mirrors this dynamic: resentment and mistrust persist despite coaching and counseling. If this fracture scales to the state level, the party emerges weaker. Fortunately for Minnesota Democrats, the Republican Party is in even worse shape.
Terry, I was disappointed in the Skydio and Lyndale votes, but Skydio more.
For Lyndale, I kind of expected the bad result. There has just not been enough complaining about the final RESULT of Hennepin for the Council to have risked Federal funding for the sake of insisting on doing Lyndale right or at least better. Folks whine wistfully over the businesses lost, but nobody (except, it seems, me) who drives seems to be saying, loud and clear, “Now that we HAVE new Hennepin, and it’s not just artist’s renderings, and now that I’ve driven on the god-forsaken, skinny, inescapable, pseudo-tunnel-of-pavement, I will not drive on it at all in future, because it is despair-inducing, and if I want to go to a Hennepin business, I’ll approach it from east or west, driving through a neighborhood that doesn’t particularly want me driving through it, on side streets. Driving Hennepin is *that* uncomfortable.” I think a groundswell of folks saying precisely that would have been necessary. Didn’t happen. Still, though, disappointed that Lyndale will go forward as-planned, which is to say, destructively to our city’s economic health and drivers’ sanity.
Skydio is a different kettle of fish. Even though I am a solid supporter of *good* policing, I concede that if one buys into the Progressive Activist / DSA vision of what is appropriate and inappropriate use of drone data, the, MPD will almost certainly, ultimately (and probably unintentionally), do *something* that will be regarded as inappropriate. After all, our beloved activists criticized MPD *not* for aiding Federal Agents at Lake and Bloomington last summer, but for showing up, when called, to a Federal action that was *not* an immigration action, and trying to help keep the situation from turning into a riot over internet-fueled and Council Member -promoted misunderstanding. This is our current sociopolitical environment. So even though I agree with, and feel for, Vetaw’s constituents who want better, faster police response, and would welcome the Skydio test to my own neighborhood as well, I “get” why that was always going to be a hard lift. My disappointment is the linking to Israel/Palestine. I really do not want to live the rest of my life in a governmental environment where it matters *at all* who a vendor’s *other customers* are. Geez, what’s next? The phase of the moon on the day the company was founded? It’s equally relevant, after all…
I think we will eventually see the Skydio turn-down as a missed opportunity – and not only for actual public safety. Right now, we are facing a Judge who is planning to make the Mayor appear in Court to defend the City over not following its own Charter requirements for the number of officers in the MPD. People try to make something of the Mayor being the one on the hot seat rather than the Council or rather than the Mayor and Council together, but that is little more than a red herring. The Judge threatened the Mayor alone, because that is what his reading of the law dictates/allows, not because he thinks the Mayor is solely at fault, or even more at fault than the Council. Basically, “the Mayor” fills in here for “the City”. And if Progressives want “the Mayor” to be able to survive that Court appearance next year without having “the City” ending up on the business end of a Court order to hire more cops “right now, no matter what” (training, quality, cost, etc.), the Council would be well advised to provide the Mayor with something to *say* in the City’s defense. And one thing they could have provide him with was the ability to say “We are hiring and training as fast as we prudently can, and in the meantime, we are doing everything within our power to improve MPD response times and effectiveness even during a time of officer shortage, with one example being that *we are using drones to assess situations faster than the officers themselves can arrive*. I predict that the Progressives on the Council are going to regret it if they do not provide the Mayor with *something* to say to that Judge. Since the existence of drones was not even a pipe dream at the time the Charter provision was written, this would have been ideal. Once again, a lack of “big picture” vision on the part of the Council majority…
Bottom line here is Mpls needs to change it’s city council structure. It should part-time and you don’t make six figures talking about stuff in the middle east.
These DSA adherents on the Mpls City Council are using Israel as their way out, but this voting block is not known for being transparent or truthful. The word duplicity comes to mind. They always oppose anything that would be helpful to the MPD, in assisting them in their work of advancing public safety.
https://replica.startribune.com/infinity/article_popover_share.aspx?guid=12dbcdb2-0673-4b47-b86e-85fbd4adbad6&share=true
Excerpt..
Opponents warned that if the city partnered with Skydio they would be complicit in the Israeli military’s operations in Gaza.
Vetaw questioned that rationale, saying: “At times it feels like members of this body are searching for reasons to say no instead of looking for reasons to give this pilot a chance. To make the outcome of this decision hinge on whether a country halfway around the world purchases equipment from the same company does not make sense to me.”