Minneapolis, MN
Hennepin County, City of Minneapolis to revamp youth intervention program
Hennepin County, City of Minneapolis to revamp youth intervention program
Changes are coming to a program helping kids in Hennepin County stay on the right track. The Youth Connection Center has been providing services to students who skip school, are out past curfew or are involved in low-level offenses.
Hennepin County, the City of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Public Schools partnered to launch the program 30 years ago.
“It was really a response to 10 to 17-year-olds who were not in school, and we were afraid [they] were at risk for entering the juvenile justice system,” said Colleen Kaibel, the director of student retention and recovery for MPS. “This was a good alternative because it gave police a place to take youth that wasn’t locked up.”
She explained that law enforcement brings youth to the center where they can connect with services.
“The demand when it started was over 500 students per year for truancy, just under that number for curfew; that number has dwindled over the years,” said Kaibel. “At the time Minneapolis Public Schools pulled out of the YCC contract, we had seen zero students brought in for truancy.”
The district pulled out of the agreement in December, citing budgetary reasons. She explained that at that point, the center was seeing less than 400 students. While about 40 kids were there for curfew, the majority were related to possible involvement in misdemeanors.
“I think it needs to be a redesigned version,” said Kaibel. “Truancy doesn’t look like it used to, policing doesn’t look like it used to, we need to change with the times.”
Hennepin County leaders agreed and are in the process of revamping the program.
“We were looking at what is the model? Is this the best way to do this?” said Lisa Bayley, the director of Safe Communities in Hennepin County. “We were hearing from law enforcement and from community and from youth that this really wasn’t what they wanted or needed.”
She explained that needs have changed since the pandemic and civil unrest.
The redesigned program will be a partnership between the county and the City of Minneapolis. It will move next year from the Public Service Building downtown to the Minneapolis South Safety Center when it opens on Minnehaha Avenue. Instead of youth only being brought in by law enforcement, it will also be open for families to walk in.
“We heard from families that ‘We’d like the opportunity to voluntarily come in and see if we can get an assessment, do some voluntary connections with service,’” said Bayley. “That could be behavioral health services, it could be substance use treatment, it could be mentoring. We can make those connections and do it in a really affirmative, warm way.”
She hopes it will be an even more proactive approach than the current program.
“We know if we can make that interaction, make that connection at an early stage, we’re much more likely to reach success in behavior change and creating a better future for those youth,” said Bayley, explaining there will be additional resources available to families, including a greater emphasis on mentoring. “And how important it is to have adult, caring adults in young people’s lives, that look like the young people they’re working with, and who are from their communities and can commit over a longer period.”
Hennepin County expects to launch a request for proposals in January that gives a community provider a role in working with the county to shape the program they want to run. The RFP has a “not to exceed” note of $600,000, according to Bayley.
A halt on the construction of data centers in Minneapolis took effect in July after the Minneapolis City Council discussed the need for more time to understand the facilities’ potential environmental impacts.
The Council approved the halt through November by an 8-5 vote in May. Members said the halt allows time to study the environmental impacts of data centers and plan their development more conscientiously.
However, Council members not in favor of the halt said it will result in reduced tax revenue and may drive away businesses willing to invest in downtown Minneapolis.
Data centers are not new to the Minneapolis area, but community concerns have grown in recent months, President of Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council Dan McConnell said.
“Data centers have been around for decades,” McConnell said. “They’re not new. There just seems to all of a sudden be this hysteria around data centers.”
Celeste Robinson, policy aide to Minneapolis Council member Robin Wonsley, said the city should not rush the process because of the potential environmental trade-offs compared with the promised economic benefits. She said the halt could be extended to allow a full 12 months of analysis.
Robinson said the Council’s halt on data centers allows for a more thorough evaluation of their impacts.
“I think that there’s a misconception that the City Council being deliberative and taking the time to do it right. I think that there’s been a portrayal that that’s somehow a bad thing,” Robinson said.
Robinson said, although data centers are often seen as an investment, there is no evidence the developments generate the economic benefits for communities that supporters claim they do. She said the Council wants to determine what resources they would potentially take from the city.
“It is corporations who see land, fresh clean water, and electric grids that they can use for their profit, and that those profits get moved out of state to shareholders,” Robinson said. “They are not reinvested in our community, and so a lot of the rhetoric around data centers has really been about unverified claims around them being a source of investment.”
The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations’ website claims that data centers are a staple for the modern job market and help to create more jobs, but labor protections for workers and regulations to protect surrounding communities are needed.
Resolution 7, a plan created by the AFL and CIO, outlines labor protections for data center employees and regulations aimed to protect surrounding communities. The plan calls for legislation that would require data centers to conserve water and energy. It seeks transparency from data center operators, union labor agreements and policies requiring data center operators to pay their share of energy and water costs.
In recent years, a lack of development in Minneapolis has seen a decline in commercial property value, leaving a shortfall of about $50 million in expected commercial property tax to fall onto the shoulders of residents, according to the Minneapolis Times. To help offset that shortfall and alleviate the burden that was placed on residents, Minneapolis must find new sources of revenue, Council member Elizabeth Shaffer said.
Some believe data centers, often being large-scale commercial developments, can relieve these financial pressures. Shaffer said the data center located in the Sleep Number headquarters in downtown Minneapolis has had a positive financial impact on the city.
“The Sleep Number building increased its valuation to eight times what it was a year ago because of a data center,” Shaffer said. “That helps relieve the property tax burden that residents and apartment owners have been feeling.”
When property values increase, property tax revenue also increases, helping Minneapolis generate revenue and address its estimated $50 million deficit, Shaffer said.
Robinson said data centers are not the only way for Minneapolis to generate revenue within the city.
“Council member Wonsley has been looking at how do we tax the rich, how do we put fees on real estate transfers for extremely high-value real estate,” Robinson said. “There are so many things that the city council can be doing to bring in new revenue to shift the property tax burden off of working-class people, that is not related to letting big tech corporations build data centers.”
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