Workers who are striking the Minneapolis Park Board for the first time in the agency’s 141-year history took the fight over their stalled contract negotiations to commissioners Wednesday night, demonstrating at their meeting for three hours straight until the board was forced to adjourn without getting anything done.

Commissioners Becky Alper and Tom Olsen started the meeting by attempting to amend the agenda with a resolution directing park managers to promptly settle with union workers. They asked the Park Board’s negotiating team to offer Local 363 a proposal with market adjustments that union leaders have committed to accepting verbally and in writing, but without the contract takeaways the union calls “poison pills” — such as provisions to reduce the number of stewards, double probation time for new hires and make automatic seniority raises discretionary.

“This unprecedented situation diverts our attention from our primary mission: preserving, protecting‚ maintaining, improving and enhancing parks,” said Alper. “Without this resolution we face as the Park Board a perilous path forward. It’s one with no end in sight. It’s one where we gradually crawl out of this hole while parks deteriorate, where workers’ families are impacted without paychecks and dissatisfaction grows among the public.”

Commissioners Alper, Olsen and Billy Menz supported amending the agenda to allow discussion of the resolution. However, Park Board President Meg Forney, Vice President Cathy Abene and Commissioners Steffanie Musich, Elizabeth Shaffer and Becka Thompson rejected the amendment (Commissioner Charles Rucker was absent).

Workers in the gallery shouted their dissatisfaction, asking why the commissioners refused to end the strike, now in its third week. The work stoppage has disrupted storm cleanup of the parks, canceled concerts at the Lake Harriet bandshell and caused maintenance jams across the system.

The only dissenter to respond was Thompson, who said she did not understand how the contract offer described in the Alper-Olsen resolution would affect the whole system. Menz, who voted to amend the agenda, added that his colleagues did not want to appear unsupportive of their negotiating team, which includes Superintendent Al Bangoura.

Kevin Pranis, Local 363′s marketing manager, said park officials were negotiating like they wanted to break the strike rather than settle it. He said it was only after seven months of stalled negotiations, and a 94% vote by Local 363 membership to authorize a strike, that the park negotiating team locked onto the “poison pill” takeaways.

“What’s happened now is that management has decided, after 140 years of Park Board history there’s never been a strike, that the goal … is now to make sure that for another 140 years no one will consider striking because they got hurt so badly in this strike,” Pranis told commissioners. “That no other union will ever consider going on strike.”

Every time commissioners attempted to move onto other business, park workers and allies from other unions formed a picket line around the board room, chanting “No contract, no peace!” and “What’s disgusting? Union busting!”

Individual workers spoke directly to commissioners, saying they had received discipline without due process and describing grievances they have pending with managers that likely have not risen to commissioners’ attention.

As the demonstration dragged on without comments from the dais, commissioners ate their dinners and had whispered conversations with each other and park lawyer Brian Rice, while the union ordered dinner from Portillo’s.

Commissioners finally walked out of the room around 8 p.m., three hours after the meeting began, without working through the agenda. Items not acted on included a resolution to transfer $10 million from neighborhood parks across the city to the redesign of North Commons Park, and extension of the lease for the Boys and Girls Club at Phelps Park.

Terryl Brumm, CEO of the Boys and Girls Club of the Twin Cities, left the meeting early, saying that while the Club’s lease of the Phelps Recreation Center now technically expires, she was confident the Park Board won’t evict them.

A man accused of using explosives to damage a Minneapolis hair salon has pleaded guilty.

United States Attorney Andrew Luger stated Tuesday in a news release that 59-year-old Michael Allen Francisco has pleaded guilty to one count of malicious use of explosive materials to damage and destroy a Minneapolis-based property.

The charges stemmed from an incident dating back to almost two years ago.

According to court documents on November 20, 2022, at approximately 2:49 AM, a homemade explosive device detonated at a hair salon.

A Ring video camera recording from the salon was able to capture the suspect, later identified as Francisco, placing the explosive device on the window of the salon.

Almost a year later on November 6, 2023, Francisco was captured on video again damaging the same salon, this time throwing a rock through a window.

Investigators said they were able to collect DNA and other evidence connecting Francisco to both incidents.

On March 28, 2024, officers and agents executed a search warrant at Francisco’s residence.

There, law enforcement found the jacket Francisco was wearing when he threw a rock through the window, as well as multiple explosive components, a .32 caliber revolver with ammunition and methamphetamine.

Francisco is prohibited from owning firearms or ammunition. He has yet to be sentenced for the case.

MINNEAPOLIS — Surveillance video shows a man on a motorcycle being tossed through the air earlier this month during a high-speed hit-and-run.

Carl Vargas was riding through downtown Minneapolis when a car blew through a red light, T-boning his motorcycle.

Miraculously, Vargas is alive and is expected to recover.

“By the grace of God, he survived due to the helmet,” said Andy Meissner, Vargas’s brother.

Vargas’s family has spent hours canvassing the area to obtain video of the crash. It also shows what happened next.

Two people get out of the crashed car and immediately get into a second vehicle that had been trailing directly behind them.

“It’s believed that the car was stolen and that another car was tailing them,” said Victoria Nichols, Vargas’s aunt.

They drove off, abandoning the first car, and now his family says Vargas is in the hospital with skull fractures, broken bones and brain bleeding.

“Every day I go in and visit, I’m just reminding him how the physical recovery is only part of the battle and that the mental side is the rest of it, and that’s where he excels the most,” Meissner said.

Vargas wasn’t just the victim of a hit-and-run. While he was lying on the sidewalk, severely injured, someone on the street walked up and stole his bag.

Nichols says Vargas had everything in the bag, including his ID, credit cards and phone.

Vargas’s family hopes someone who witnessed the crash can help, particularly one person seen in the surveillance video who looks to be recording everything, including the getaway car’s license plate.

“We’re just motivated to…figure out who did this to him to hold someone accountable,” Nichols said.

Minneapolis police say they’re investigating, but no one’s been arrested.

“Hopefully we can get some exposure on this in a way that leads to justice for Carl,” Meissner said.