Take the Win—and Build on It

Prospect Park reduced residential natural-gas use through neighborhood organizing that cost less than $300 a year. Minneapolis should expand what worked—and develop different tools for residents facing different barriers.

A Minneapolis Times series about the character, competence and judgment public leadership requires.

Minneapolis government spends a great deal of time debating large programs with large price tags. That makes what happened in Prospect Park especially refreshing.

Residents set out to reduce the neighborhood’s natural-gas consumption. They promoted home-energy audits, insulation, air sealing, heating improvements and the rebates available to help pay for them. They organized workshops, distributed information and reported the neighborhood’s progress.

They called the campaign 25×25 because the goal was to reduce residential natural-gas use by 25% by the end of 2025.

The campaign did not reach that precise target. It still produced a meaningful result.

And according to Mary Britton, the Prospect Park resident and data analyst who organized the initiative, its average operating budget was less than $300 a year.

Sometimes government should simply take the win.

Neighbors Helping Neighbors

Using 2019 as its measurement baseline, the 25×25 campaign began publicly in 2021. Its methods were hardly revolutionary.

Residents were encouraged to obtain home-energy audits. The campaign explained the value of insulation and other improvements. It helped people find utility rebates, tax incentives and financing. Volunteers spoke with neighbors at community events and through local organizations.

Britton emphasized that the campaign did not shame people who failed to act. A household might be dealing with a job loss, an illness, a family crisis or a furnace that had not yet reached the end of its useful life. The information remained available whenever that household was ready.

That patience mattered. Home improvements do not happen according to a government calendar. A resident who learns about insulation this year may act next year. Someone else may wait until the furnace needs replacement.

That is why Britton now recommends giving participating neighborhoods at least three years to build awareness and produce measurable results.

The campaign also gave residents something they do not often receive from government programs: evidence that their individual decisions were adding up to something larger.

The Results Were Real

The precise percentage depends on which comparison is being used.

CenterPoint Energy data reported by the Minnesota Star Tribune showed that residential natural-gas use in Prospect Park fell 29% from 2019 through the end of 2024. Natural-gas use across Minneapolis fell 20% during the same period.

Weather contributed to both reductions. The 2019 baseline year was colder than average, while 2024 was warmer than average.

Britton therefore presented the neighborhood’s performance relative to the broader Minneapolis change. By that measurement, she told the City Council that Prospect Park had reduced its natural-gas consumption by nearly 12%.

The campaign cannot claim sole credit for every furnace replacement or insulation project completed in Prospect Park. It can point to a neighborhood that performed better than the citywide trend and experienced increased participation in CenterPoint rebate programs.

The campaign also produced something that can be used elsewhere: a practical method for organizing a neighborhood around a measurable goal.

The Questions From Council Members

The reception at the City Council’s Climate and Infrastructure Committee was largely positive. Council members praised Britton’s work and explored how its lessons might be applied elsewhere.

They also raised important questions about people the original model does not readily serve.

Council Member Pearll Warren described renters in poorly insulated North Minneapolis homes. They may face high heating bills without having the authority to improve the property. She also discussed lower-income homeowners who cannot afford major improvements even when rebates are available.

Council Member Aisha Chughtai focused on large and out-of-state landlords who possess the resources to improve their buildings but may have little incentive to do so.

Those concerns do not show that the Prospect Park model failed. They identify different problems.

A homeowner who can afford insulation but has never considered it may need information, encouragement and help navigating available rebates.

A homeowner who understands the benefits but cannot afford the work needs financial assistance.

A renter whose distant landlord refuses to improve the building faces a problem of authority and accountability.

All three households may be using too much natural gas, but the reasons are different. The solutions will be different as well.

Do Not Turn One Program Into Every Program

Government has a habit of finding something that works and then asking it to accomplish every related public goal.

Too often, a small neighborhood campaign becomes a housing-affordability initiative. The housing initiative acquires landlord regulations. The regulations require an enforcement system. The original program eventually becomes larger, more expensive and harder to operate.

That would miss the lesson of Prospect Park.

The 25×25 model works most readily with property owners who have the ability to act but need information, motivation or help finding existing assistance. Its great advantage is that it can reach those people at remarkably little organizational cost.

Minneapolis should preserve that advantage.

Residents who lack the money to make improvements should not be forgotten. Neither should renters whose landlords refuse to act. But helping those residents will probably require substantially more funding, different incentives and, in some cases, regulation or enforcement.

They deserve programs designed around the barriers they actually face—not a collection of added obligations attached to a neighborhood volunteer campaign.

Try It in Five More Neighborhoods

Britton told council members that she hopes to work with as many as five additional Minneapolis neighborhoods. That is a sensible next step.

The city can help identify participating neighborhood organizations, make energy-use information available, promote existing audits and rebates, and measure each neighborhood’s performance against the citywide trend.

The neighborhood organizations can decide how best to communicate locally. What works in Prospect Park may not work exactly the same way in Seward, Lowry Hill or North Minneapolis. Local organizations know which events residents attend, which messages they trust and how information travels through their communities.

There is no need to design a large permanent bureaucracy before learning whether the model travels.

The simple arithmetic is tempting. Minneapolis officially has 83 residential neighborhoods. At Prospect Park’s historical cash expense of $300 per neighborhood, the total would be $24,900 a year.

That is not a citywide budget estimate. It does not include volunteer labor, the cost of household improvements or the coordination that broader expansion would require. But the calculation demonstrates how small the organizing expense has been compared with the potential value of the result.

Start with five neighborhoods. Give them three years. Measure the results consistently. Learn which parts of the Prospect Park approach transfer easily and which need to be adapted.

Build the Next Tool, Too

Last week, I argued that everything fails when the standard is perfection. Prospect Park offers the positive side of that argument.

The campaign set an ambitious goal. It did not hit the number exactly. It nevertheless helped produce measurable progress, developed a replicable process and did so at almost no organizational cost.

At the same time, the city can develop better financial assistance for lower-income property owners and stronger tools for dealing with landlords who leave renters in cold, inefficient homes.

Doing one does not prevent doing the other.

Good government does not require every useful program to carry every worthy goal. It recognizes what worked, measures it honestly and builds different tools for different problems.

Prospect Park gave Minneapolis something worth expanding.

Minneapolis can take that win and build on it.