Elias said the path’s design may be determined by the final location of the parkway, and the park board is primarily focused on preventing pedestrian-vehicle collisions.

The board initially recommended relocating the Bde Maka Ska boat launch and Minneapolis Sailing Center in the 2016 Lake Harriet and Bde Maka Ska master plan. In 2021, the park board commissioners asked staff to begin envisioning a new facility, according to Elias. Draft plans were introduced earlier this year.

After receiving community feedback on this initial draft, MPRB will develop a preferred concept.

“We are basically at square zero of a very long project,” Elias said.

He added that plans for funding the project will be determined in the future, noting that there is no set timeline.

“I think it’s safe to say this will not be a cheap project,” Elias said. “It will require financial resources from the sailing center and public funding sources to get across the finish line.”

For several years, school districts have known of the so-called “fiscal cliff” that would come with the drying up of federal pandemic aid, and the 2024-25 budgets approved by the Minneapolis and St. Paul school boards took those losses into account and sought to minimize the pain through the use of reserves.

Minneapolis is drawing down about $55 million, while St. Paul plans to tap $37 million in rainy-day funds. But the squeeze still is being felt. Classroom teachers, not specialists, are handling art and music instruction at seven St. Paul schools, and parents are growing increasingly frustrated over larger class sizes in Minneapolis.

St. Paul used pandemic funds to support struggling students through interventions grounded in the phonics-based “science of reading,” and learned that students who participated in the program known as WINN showed greater progress during the year than those who did not.

Now the district is spending $7 million of its own money to pay WINN teachers.

Altogether, St. Paul received $319 million in federal pandemic funds, and invested not just in academic recovery efforts, but also after-school programming, social workers and counselors, and staff retention bonuses, among other items. Cash-strapped Minneapolis relied heavily on its nearly $265 million to plug budget gaps and now faces tough decisions that could include school mergers and closures.

Omar noted how many school districts were forced to cut just a year after a historic $2.2 billion state investment in schools. Legislators must “keep their foot on the gas to fully fund our schools,” she said.