BY GARY ARNTSEN

Twenty-four hours after the NRP Policy Board adjourned its final meeting, after 20-plus years, neighborhood representatives Carol Pass and Jeff Strand were elected by the Neighborhood and Community Engagement Commission (NCEC) to the newly reconstituted NRP Policy Board. Their current terms ended Dec. 31, and their new terms begin in January and end in June.

Christopher Hoffer and Ali Warsame were also elected to the new policy board. Six of the 14 members present (two were absent) ran for the four positions. Pass and Strand have served on the policy board for many years but now will be term-limited because NCEC commsissioners have term limits. Pass lives in East Phillips and was elected to the NCEC in June. Strand lives in Shingle Creek and was appointed to NCEC by the City Council to a term ending next June. Warsame, a Cedar-Riverside resident, was appointed by the park board in June. Hoffer lives in Loring Park and was elected in June.

State law requires that there be a minimum of seven members on the NRP Policy Board: mayor or designee, City Council president or designee, one member each from the Minneapolis delegations to the Minnesota House and Senate, and one member each from the county, park and school boards. The City Council decided to continue having four neighborhood reps. The old policy board has three county commissioners and one representative each from the Minneapolis Central Labor Union and the United Way.

The City Council established NRP Phase 3 at its meeting Friday, Dec. 16. It requested that NCEC appoint the four neighborhood reps from the members of the NCEC for an interim term ending in June 2012, by which time the neighborhoods will have held NCEC elections and after which the NCEC may make annual appointments from the members of the NCEC to full one-year terms.
The Framework for the Future adopted by the City Council in 2008 says neighborhood associations will remain autonomous organizations, the work done by them is considered a basic city service and the City will allocate $3 million annually to neighborhood associations for operating expenses. The framework charges neighborhood associations with developing the process for selecting the eight neighborhood reps on the NCEC. The other eight members are appointed by the City Council (5), mayor (2) and park board (1).

Representatives of neighborhood associations met on April 16 and decided to use basically the same process to select people to terms on NCEC beginning in June that was used for the first election in 2009. Now it's already time for neighborhood associations to start thinking about the process that will be used to select people to terms beginning in June 2012. Should the current process be used or should it be changed? Some of the possible issues:

- The eight districts, which were partially based on relatively equal populations, are now too unbalanced, based on the 2010 census.

- Staggered two-year terms were designed to provide continuity, but only one of eight wanted to continue (and did).

- Should there be one-year terms instead of two-year terms?

- Selection process for the four neighborhood reps on the policy board.

The selection process will be discussed at a workshop at the Neighborhood and Community Connections Conference on Saturday, Feb. 11, at the Zurah Shrine Event Center, 2540 Park Ave. S. No decisions on the process can be made there. If the process is to be changed, it can only be changed at a meeting called by neighborhood associations for the purpose of considering changing the selection process. If neighborhood associations want such a meeting, it needs to be held in a time frame that results in the selection of the NCEC members in May or June.

The original process for election of NRP neighborhood reps, used until 1995, allowed all Minneapolis residents 18 or over who showed up at the annual election to vote. Elections were held by the three neighborhood types (protection, revitalization and redirection), followed by an at-large election to guarantee an opportunity for diversity. The City Council had originally designated three positions for neighborhood reps, and added a fourth to provide greater opportunity for diversity. NRP identified four diversity criteria: neighborhood type (automatic because three reps were elected by neighborhood type), gender, race and part of town (north, central and south). After the three were elected, if there was not diversity, the only people that could run in the at-large election were people that would provide diversity for that criteria.

NCEC's selectees are diverse: they are not all of the same gender, same race, or part of town. All three neighborhood types are represented (as was required in the NRP elections process); diversity would only require that not all four be from the same neighborhood type). But it was close. When facilitator Christopher Hoffer announced the election results, he said Strand, Hoffer and Warsame were elected and another election is needed to break a tie between Pass and Ed Newman. If Pass had lost the tie-breaker election, there would be no gender diversity and no representation from redirection neighborhoods.