What Stays On: The View from Up North

The old generator behind the Up North Café can’t run everything at once. Neither can a city budget. The hard part isn’t naming what matters. It’s deciding what matters first.

The power went out at the Up North Café one afternoon last week with two quick blinks and then the sort of silence you don’t notice until the refrigerator stops humming.

The lights went dark. The little fan by the pie case coasted to a stop. Somebody near the window said, “Well, there it is,” which is about as close as we generally get to panic around here.

Arlene went out back and came in a few minutes later with Cal Becker.

Cal is the fellow people call when something sticks, leaks, rattles, sags, quits or begins making a noise it was not making yesterday. He has been keeping things around town out of the landfill for years, sometimes longer than the manufacturer probably intended.

He got Arlene’s old generator running, and we began deciding what we could live without.

This was easy at first.

The radio went off. Arlene shut down a couple lights nobody needed. The pie-case light went dark. Somebody unplugged the fan. I pointed out a little lamp by the window that, in my estimation, had contributed almost nothing to the economic life of northern Minnesota.

We stood around feeling thrifty.

Then Arlene tried the coffee maker.

The generator growled.

Cal came back inside, looked at the breaker panel and asked what she had turned on.

Arlene told him.

He shook his head.

“You can have the freezer or the coffee maker.”

I looked at him. “Those both seem pretty important.”

“Not to the generator.”

Now we were getting somewhere unpleasant.

The freezer had food in it. So did the refrigerator. Arlene needed enough lights to keep serving people. The dishwasher was already developing a backlog.

I suggested the dishwasher could probably wait.

Arlene looked at the stack of dirty mugs beside it. Then she looked at the coffee maker.

I realized that my fiscal plan involved continuing to manufacture dirty coffee cups while eliminating the machine that washed them.

There are occasions when a thoughtful person revises his position before the opposition has to speak.

So I sat down with what remained of my coffee and checked the Minneapolis budget news on my phone.

Mayor Jacob Frey says the city began putting together its 2027 budget with more than $60 million in pressure. Without changes, his administration says the property-tax levy increase could have exceeded 19 percent. His recommendation brings that down to 11.3 percent after more than $20 million in reductions from what 2027 otherwise would have required and the elimination of roughly 100 city positions.

Eleven-point-three percent is still the sort of number that makes a homeowner put down his fork.

But I give Frey considerable credit for something politicians are not always rewarded for doing: he has put an ugly number on the table and admitted that the choices underneath it are ugly too.

Some of the pressure comes from higher ongoing costs, the disappearance of temporary pandemic-era money and city budgets that have not always matched what recurring expenses actually cost. Police overtime is the most obvious example. Critics are right that MPD needs stronger controls. Frey himself says overtime shifts should be reviewed and prioritized. But putting too little money in the overtime line does not make overtime disappear. It makes the budget look better until the expense arrives anyway.

About then Cal came back through the Café.

Somebody had plugged the fan in again.

He unplugged it.

Nobody confessed.

That, too, struck me as relevant.

Frey has started making choices. That does not mean 11.3 percent is suddenly reasonable merely because the alternative might have been worse. Council Member Elizabeth Shaffer says it is still too high, and I find myself closest to her view.

Shaffer’s useful point is that a budget is not primarily a declaration of what kind of person you are. It is a negotiation among competing goods under actual financial conditions. She wants more belt-tightening than Frey has proposed, but she also acknowledges that spending cuts alone cannot close a structural problem this large. She wants core services protected and argues that Minneapolis has to rebuild its commercial tax base so homeowners and renters are not continually asked to absorb more of the burden.

That sounds about right to me.

Everybody can make a priority list when everything on it gets funded.

The useful part begins farther down the page.

Council Member Robin Wonsley thinks Frey has some of the priorities wrong, and a few of her questions deserve answers. She objects to cuts affecting rental inspections, municipal sidewalk plowing, neighborhood services and climate funding while the Police Department budget rises. She also argues that police spending, including overtime, should face stronger scrutiny and clearer evidence that the money produces results. She explicitly says difficult cuts have to be made.

There is nothing foolish about wanting rental inspections done properly. Safe sidewalks in Minnesota are not a luxury item. And I would not give any department a blank check simply because somebody wrote public safety across the top.

But I think Wonsley and I part company over what happens when all the useful things no longer fit.

There are services a city would like to provide, services it ought to provide and services without which the basic machinery of the place begins to fail. Police and fire protection, streets, public works, emergency response and dependable basic administration belong awfully high on that list.

If Wonsley can restore the programs she thinks Frey has cut in the wrong places, reduce police spending that is not producing results, adequately fund the services Minneapolis simply has to provide and bring that levy down substantially, I would sincerely like to see the arithmetic.

Because saying one thing should stay leaves the same question Cal was dealing with behind the Café.

What comes off?

A woman at the counter asked Arlene whether she could plug the pie-case light back in so she could see what was left.

Cal, who was crouched by the panel again, looked up.

“You can.”

He waited.

“What are you unplugging?”

The pie remained visible well enough.

That is why Shaffer’s approach strikes me as the best starting place. Frey deserves credit for acknowledging the size of the problem and for making identifiable cuts rather than pretending temporary money and optimistic assumptions can continue indefinitely. Wonsley is right that the Council should challenge individual choices and demand better management where the city is spending poorly. Shaffer seems most willing to say both things at once: the tax burden is still too high, many of the things competing for money are worthwhile, and elected officials still have to choose.

Nobody gets elected by promising voters fewer things they like.

Unfortunately, generators do not run for office.

By late afternoon, Cal had the old one settled into a steady growl. The refrigerator was humming. The freezer was cold. Enough lights were on. Arlene had the dishwasher running through a load of cups.

The coffee maker remained dark.

I picked up my mug and tilted it toward myself, on the off chance that the situation had improved without authorization.

Arlene saw me.

She slid the water pitcher down the counter.