Job Descriptions vs. Daydreams: A Tale of Two Council Members

If you wanted to see a perfect snapshot of why Minneapolis feels like a city adrift, you didn’t need to look any further than the City Council chambers this past week. While the city faces a massive budget gap, a police staffing crisis, and an Uptown district that is struggling to regain its pulse, our elected leaders were busy shouting at each other over the Cold War and the investment strategies of banks in Brussels.

The fallout from that meeting gave us a clear look at two very different versions of what a City Council member is supposed to be. On one side, you have Ward 7’s Elizabeth Shaffer, who is essentially asking her colleagues to read their own job descriptions. On the other, you have Ward 2’s Robin Wonsley, who seems to view her seat not as a local office, but as a platform for global activism.

The contrast between their post-meeting emails to constituents is more than just a difference in “vibe.” It’s a fundamental disagreement over what we, the taxpayers, are actually paying for.

The “Adult in the Room” Approach

In her update, titled “Chaos on Council, Signs of Hope in Uptown” Elizabeth Shaffer didn’t mince words. She pointed out the absurdity of the headlines. While the council actually did some real work this week—approving $2.8 million in emergency rental assistance and discussing a new training facility for first responders—none of that made the front page. What made the front page? The “acrimony” and “rancor” over resolutions regarding Cuba and European divestment from ICE.

Shaffer’s frustration is palpable, and frankly, it’s earned. She noted that during her campaign, she heard a consistent message: residents are tired of a council that performs for an “imagined global audience” while the “boring” stuff—like making sure people can walk down the street safely or afford their property taxes—gets treated like an afterthought.

Shaffer did something bold in her email: she actually cited the City of Minneapolis website’s list of “Powers and Duties” for council members. It’s a list that includes things like:

• Enacting local laws.

• Managing city finances.

• Assuring orderly growth and development.

Notice what isn’t on that list? “Conducting amateur diplomacy with Caribbean nations” or “Lobbying European financial institutions.”

Shaffer’s point is the definition of common sense. When the council weighs in on every global development over which they have zero authority, they don’t look powerful. They look small. They dilute their own voice to the point that when they actually have something important to say about Minneapolis, the rest of the world (and many of their own constituents) has already tuned them out.

The Flight from Reality

Then there is Council Member Wonsley’s response. If Shaffer’s email was a bucket of cold water, Wonsley’s was a trip through a looking glass.

Wonsley defended her resolution on Cuba by claiming it was a response to “community requests.” She argued that because the council has passed resolutions on Iraq (2007) and Ukraine (2022), it is now a tradition to treat City Hall like a mini-United Nations. Her logic seems to be: “We’ve wasted time on things we can’t control in the past, so why stop now?”

But it’s her support for the European divestment resolution that really highlights the “flight from reality” that Shaffer is so worried about. Wonsley bragged about supporting a “delegation of Minneapolis residents” heading to Europe to tell banks how to handle their money.

Let’s pause and think about that for a second. We have a city with a $2 billion budget under immense strain. We have a police department that is over 100 officers short. We have residents struggling with a cost-of-living crisis. And a sitting member of our City Council thinks it is a “strategic action” to spend time and political capital helping a group of people fly to Europe to protest federal immigration agencies.

Wonsley justifies this by saying we “no longer have a functional federal government.” Even if you believe that, how is a resolution from the Minneapolis City Council supposed to fix it? It’s pure performance. It’s an attempt to feel important on a global stage because the hard work of fixing a local budget or revitalizing a neighborhood like Uptown is—to borrow Shaffer’s word—”boring.”

The Impact of the “7-6” Split

The most telling part of this whole saga is the vote count. The Cuba resolution passed 7-6. That means the council is almost perfectly split down the middle, spending hours of staff time and public energy on an issue that has no local impact and on which they can’t even find a solid consensus.

When the council is this divided over “virtue signaling,” it poisons the well for the things that actually matter. It creates a culture of acrimony. As the Star Tribune noted, the “rancor” broke out during these foreign policy debates. That rancor doesn’t just disappear when they move on to the next item on the agenda, like rental assistance or public safety. It lingers. It makes it harder for them to work together on the very things they were actually hired to do.

Wonsley claims these resolutions “matter to residents.” But which residents? The ones trying to run a business in a neighborhood where the windows keep getting smashed? The ones whose property tax assessments just came back with another double-digit increase? Or is it a small, loud group of activists who view local government as a springboard for national political movements?

The “53-Minute” Taxpayer Receipt

If you want to know exactly what “burning daylight” looks like in City Hall, you only have to look at the timer on the March 26 council meeting. Out of a three-and-a-half-hour meeting, a staggering 53 minutes were swallowed up by three items that have zero to do with the city’s legal jurisdiction.

That is nearly an hour spent debating the labor rights of University of Minnesota graduate students, the nuances of federal policy toward Cuba, and a resolution asking banks in Europe to stop doing business with ICE. For those keeping track at home, that’s about 25% of the entire meeting dedicated to issues where the Council has exactly zero power to change the outcome.

But it’s not just the minutes on the clock; it’s the high-priced help sitting in the room while it happens. If you watch the video of that meeting, you aren’t just seeing 13 Council Members. You are seeing:

• At least four staff members from the City Clerk and City Attorney’s offices.

• The Director of Public Works and their senior staff.

• The Director of Community Planning and Economic Development and their staff.

• A small army of technical professionals running the broadcast, managing the speaker systems, and transcribing the closed captions in real-time.

These are some of the most highly compensated experts in the city. We pay them to solve our infrastructure crises, manage our housing developments, and keep our city’s legal shield intact. Instead, they were forced to sit through nearly an hour of performative shouting about international banking and Caribbean diplomacy.

And remember, the 53 minutes of public “rancor” is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind every one of these “resolutions” are hours—perhaps days—of city staff time spent meeting, drafting, and revising language before it ever hits the floor.

While the Council was busy playing amateur diplomat, the “boring” reality of Minneapolis continued to wait. Every minute spent debating the trade embargo on Cuba was a minute not spent discussing how to fix the $2 billion budget gap or how to recruit the 119 police officers we are currently missing. When we talk about “resources,” we usually mean money. But in a city facing the challenges Minneapolis is facing, time is our most precious resource—and right now, the Council is spending it like they have an infinite supply.

Back to the Charter

The official “Powers and Duties” of the City Council are clear. They are the “legislative body of the City.” Their job is to represent their wards and help residents solve problems.

When a resident calls their council member because a street light is out or a development project is stalled, they aren’t looking for a lecture on “mass solidarity against fascist governments.” They are looking for a city official to do their job.

Council Member Shaffer hit the nail on the head when she said, “Minneapolis needs municipal leaders focused on Minneapolis.” We don’t need leaders who are “honored to support” international divestment tours while the local “house” is proverbially on fire.

The choice facing Minneapolis voters is becoming increasingly clear. Do we want a council that treats its official powers like a sacred trust to be managed with “decorum and rigor,” as Shaffer suggests? Or do we want a council that views its duties as a distraction from the “critical work” of solving the world’s problems?

If we want Minneapolis to be a “success story” rather than a “cautionary tale,” we need more members who recognize that their authority ends at the city limits—and that there is more than enough work to do within those boundaries to keep them busy for a lifetime.

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