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Minneapolis is at the forefront of change in policing and community safety in this country. From formally establishing a new comprehensive model for community safety to a court agreement that provides the framework for lasting change, the people of Minneapolis and our entire local government have embraced reform and begun the hard work of redefining what safety looks like in our city. Together, we are embarking on a journey that will fundamentally change the way we do business for future generations.

That same push for progress guided our city’s approach to negotiating a new police contract.

With 40% fewer officers today than this time four years ago, Minneapolis is at an inflection point. That’s why we approached negotiating this contract with a willingness to think bigger on both changes to the contract and officer pay.

For decades, city officials have gradually given away managerial oversight to the police union in exchange for modest pay increases. The results: limited authority for police chiefs to manage a culture they were charged with shifting and limited ability to recruit and retain officers with below-market pay.

Even before negotiations for a new police contract began nine months ago, it was clear that we would need to approach negotiations differently. That’s why last year we hosted a series of listening sessions across Minneapolis that sought community input to guide the city’s priorities and included several City Council members on the labor negotiations workgroup. Thanks to months of input from residents across our city, we developed and successfully pushed the union to agree to significant reforms.

The city fought for and secured increased transparency, accountability and oversight. This agreement moves us in the right direction by:

• Giving the chief more discretion over job assignments and staffing requirements, so that the department can assign officers to areas of the greatest need and make promotions based on candidate readiness rather than arbitrary staffing percentages.

• Ending old and outdated side agreements and zipping up all of the written agreements into the contract so the city, the union and the public know exactly what has been agreed to in writing at the start of the term of the contract.

• Getting the union to agree that we can use non-sworn employees for investigative work, which will allow the chief to put more officers on the street focused on critical safety work instead of sitting behind a desk.

These are just a few key ways this contract answers the call for change. Taken together, these terms will increase the tools available to the chief of police to instill accountability and shift the culture.

This contract can also help us deliver on change residents from across every neighborhood are rightly demanding: replenishing the ranks. The downward trend in officer staffing is not going to correct itself, and the raises negotiated in this contract will help Minneapolis compete for a limited pool of candidates.

The increased pay and financial incentives will help give Minneapolis and the MPD an opportunity to stabilize staffing levels, which would in turn reduce reliance on overtime to fill shifts and response times to get to people who need help. Overreliance on overtime is a cycle that leads to burnout, causing more officers to leave and fewer potential applicants wanting to apply. This exacerbates the staffing crisis we are already experiencing. Making pay competitive is not a nice-to-have — it’s a need-to-have for the overall health of our city’s safety ecosystem.

Does this contract deliver on every change we sought? No, of course not. It is a contract negotiation, and compromise is the essence of this work. After months of engagement, good faith negotiations with the union and hard-fought reforms secured, this contract represents an opportunity to deliver meaningful change in policing and deliver more than lip service to the police officers who go to work every day to help make Minneapolis safer.

We are a city of progress. Further delaying this contract is not progress; voting on it is. We encourage City Council members to vote yes and to vote yes now.

Jacob Frey is mayor of Minneapolis. Todd Barnette is community safety commissioner. Brian O’Hara is chief of police.

One woman was injured in a shooting at a Minneapolis park on Friday.

According to Minneapolis Parks Police, just before 4 p.m., a woman was shot by another woman at the northeast corner of Peavey Park.

The woman was brought to HCMC with non-life-threatening injuries.

Authorities say the suspect left in a vehicle but was arrested later Friday night by Minneapolis police.

Elizabeth Jean “Betty” Norris commuted by bike in an era when that wasn’t all the rage in Minneapolis, wheeling her way to work from the south Minneapolis neighborhood where she was among the first Black homeowners, to downtown where she built a 30-year career with the U.S. Postal Service.

Norris died on June 9 following an illness. She was 93.

Norris worked the overnight shift as a clerk inside the big, beautiful downtown Minneapolis post office. It was an era when the Postal Service was among the most desirable career destinations for African Americans, said daughter Michele Norris, a national journalist who once hosted National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” program. While employed there, Norris appeared on the cover of a Postal Service career textbook in bluejeans and a vest.

Michele Norris fondly recalled her mother’s get-up as she tooled her three-speed bike downtown: bell bottoms cuffed with rubber bands so they wouldn’t get greasy, purse in her bike basket and “Jackie O-style scarf on her head.

“She wore cowboy boots and bowties. She was an individual. … She was not following trends and in retrospect she was probably helping set them,” Michele Norris said.

Norris met her former husband on the job; he worked days as a counter clerk. The two had three daughters together, including Michele.

She found other ways to make the post office more than just a workplace. Norris created a library inside the station, as it was challenging for overnight workers to make it to the public library during the day. With a single room lined with books, she created an organizational system and a system for lending.

“In a world that had not yet opened up in the way that it has now, there were a lot of people of color, a lot of women, a lot of people from small-town America that had made their way to the Twin Cities … that if circumstances were different, might have been able to get a college education,” Michele Norris said.

Betty Norris read everything: newspapers, Westerns, British mysteries. She liked theater and TV, too, said granddaughter Aja Johnson, who remembers watching “Downton Abbey” together and sharing ice cream. The two spoke daily until her grandmother’s death, Johnson said.

Her sweet tooth was prolific. Norris particularly loved root beer floats and coffee ice cream, which became Johnson’s favorite, too.

“I think the lesson there for me and for my family, too, is she kind of put joy at the forefront of her life, and was always laughing and always finding reasons to be happy. … I think that’s what we’ll miss most about her,” Johnson said.

Norris was an example for her as she moves into adulthood, said Johnson, who is a law student. She lived on her own until 90 years old, Johnson said.

“She was a cool woman. She grew up in the Depression and was always fiercely independent up until she passed, always put herself first,” Johnson said.

‘Fearlessly loyal to the state’

The Norris family are fourth-generation Minnesotans — which is somewhat unusual. Many Black families made their way to Minnesota during the Great Migration from the Southern states, but the family predated that. Norris was born in Duluth before her family ended up in the Twin Cities.

When Norris and her husband purchased a home in south Minneapolis, in the 4800 block of Oakland Avenue, they were the sole Black family in what was then a white neighborhood. Neighbors hurried to sell their homes as property values began to fall. Nobody wanted to live next to the Negro family and people hung nasty signs outside their homes, Michele Norris said.

But their homes wouldn’t sell. Norris did not shrink and hide her family away. When prospective buyers were at the neighboring homes, Betty sent her brown-skinned daughters out to play in the backyard so they knew exactly who their neighbors would be.

“Mom showed her character and she didn’t cower and she didn’t hide, she didn’t pull the curtains,” Michele said. “They probably worked even harder to make sure their house was a standout, knowing that everyone was watching them.”

Eventually, the only buyer a neighbor could find was another Black family; the Norrises formed a close bond with them. Over time, the neighborhood and schools integrated.

“She really was a Minnesotan, fearlessly loyal to the state, to the sports teams, to the way of life, to the politics of Minnesota, all of that was deeply reflected in who she was,” her daughter said.

Services have been held.