Pre-charter (1850s–1920) The Minneapolis City Council has existed longer than the city's
home rule charter. The cities of Minneapolis and Saint Anthony incorporated in 1856 and 1855 respectively, each with councils of their own; in 1872, when the two cities merged, there were twenty aldermen, two representing each of ten council wards. By 1900, the council comprised twenty-six members, two from each of thirteen
wards. In 1896, Minnesota adopted an amendment allowing cities more autonomy, and debates began over how to structure the government and its council. At the time, the city had a
council government with a relatively weak mayor role. The first proposal for an independent charter shifted significant power to the
mayor. In 1898, voters rejected that strong-mayor proposal.
Home rule (1920–1999) Over the first thirty years of the charter's existence, there were several failed plans to change the city council's role and makeup. These included proposals to change to the number of representatives or to add at-large seats. it failed to win over sufficient voters to amend the charter. Attempts to give the mayor more authority failed at the ballot box several times in this period, most notably in 1988 when it failed despite the support of mayor
Don Fraser. In one of the first successful charter amendments, the city council assumed its current size of 13 single-member wards in 1951. In 1983, the term for representatives was changed from
alderman to council member. The first openly gay member,
Brian Coyle, was elected in 1983 to represent Ward 6 and died of AIDS while in office as council vice president.
21st century Structure and composition The city adopted
instant-runoff voting in 2006, first using it in the
2009 elections. In 2013, Minneapolis elected
Abdi Warsame,
Alondra Cano, and Blong Yang, the city's first Somali-American, Mexican-American, and Hmong-American city councilpeople, respectively. In 2017,
Phillipe Cunningham from Ward 4 and
Andrea Jenkins from Ward 8 were elected to the City Council, becoming the first openly transgender Black man and woman, respectively, to be elected to any office in the United States. In
2021, voters approved a "
strong mayor" amendment. This took away the city council's executive authority, delineating the council's role as legislative and the mayor's role as executive.
Major policies The city council passed a resolution in March 2015 making
fossil fuel divestment city policy. With encouragement from city administration, Minneapolis joined seventeen cities worldwide in the
Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. The city's
climate plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 15 percent in 2015 "compared to 2006 levels, 30 percent by 2025 and 80 percent by 2050". In 2018, the city council passed the Minneapolis Comprehensive 2040 Plan and submitted it for Metropolitan Council approval. Watched nationally, the plan rezoned predominantly single-family residential neighborhoods for triplexes to increase affordable housing, seeking to reduce the
effects of climate change, and tried to rectify some of the city's racial disparities. After the Metropolitan Council approved the plan, in November 2019 the city council voted unanimously to allow duplexes and triplexes citywide. The
Brookings Institution called it "a relatively rare example of success for the
YIMBY agenda" and "the most wonderful plan of the year." In 2020, after the
murder of George Floyd, nine city council members announced their highly controversial goals to disband the
Minneapolis Police Department. Their plan included amending the city's charter to remove the requirement for a minimum number of officers, along with replacing the MPD with a broader public safety agency. The city council was then discovered to have been utilizing private security at a cost of $4,500 per day for three of their members. The plan
made it to the ballot in 2021, but ended up failing with only 43% of votes in support of it; along with six of the nine city council members who wanted to disband the police department either voted out or having not ran for reelection.
Controversies and incidents In July 2001, DFL council member Brian Herron pleaded guilty to one count of felony extortion. Herron admitted to accepting a $10,000 bribe from business owner Selwin Ortega who faced numerous health and safety inspection violations at his Las Americas grocery stores. Herron served a one-year sentence in federal prison. On November 21, 2002, ten-year DFL council member Joe Biernat was convicted of five federal felony charges, one count of embezzlement, three counts of mail fraud, and one count of making a false statement. Biernat was found not guilty on extortion and conspiracy to extort charges. In September 2005,
Green Party council member
Dean Zimmermann was served with a federal search warrant to his home by the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The
affidavit attached to the warrant revealed that the FBI had Zimmermann on
video and
audiotape accepting bribes for a zoning change. Zimmermann subsequently lost his re-election campaign, and was convicted in federal court on three counts of accepting cash from a developer and found not guilty of soliciting property from people with business with the city. Zimmermann was released from prison in July 2008. In 2009, council president Barbara A. Johnson was accused of misusing campaign funds for personal spending. An administrative hearing was held January 26, 2010. The administrative judges at the hearing dismissed six of the eight charges; it upheld two charges—that AAA services were paid for both her and her husband's vehicle and that not all charges for hairstyling or dry cleaning were reasonably related to the campaign. Johnson paid a $200 fine for these violations, the lowest fine possible. In 2015, DFL council member
Alondra Cano used her Twitter account to publish private cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses of critics who wrote about her involvement in a Black Lives Matter rally. In 2021, while leaving a Pride Day event, a car containing then-Council Vice President
Andrea Jenkins was surrounded by protesters who blocked her from moving until she signed a list of demands, which included not interfering with the occupied
George Floyd Square and the resignation of Mayor
Jacob Frey. Jenkins was stuck for over 90 minutes before signing the list so she could depart. In July 2022, in response to incidents on the
4th of July in downtown Minneapolis during which groups of younger people were seen launching fireworks at buildings and passerby, council member Michael Rainville stated while meeting with his constituents that he was going to go to a mosque in Northeast Minneapolis to "meet with Somali elders and tell them that their children can no longer have that type of behavior." His comments drew criticism, including from fellow City Council members who attempted to censure him.
Jamal Osman,
Jeremiah Ellison, and
Aisha Chughtai, the council's three Muslim members at the time, issued a statement calling Rainville's comments "incorrect," "inappropriate," "disturbing," and "dangerous." Rainville has since apologized. At the Minneapolis DFL caucus for Ward 10 on May 13, 2023, supporters of challenger Nasri Warsame rushed the stage when incumbent Aisha Chughtai was scheduled to speak. Chughtai claimed that over a dozen of her supporters and DFL volunteers were physically assaulted in the chaos, while Warsame claimed his campaign manager had been hospitalized due to an injury sustained by a member of the opposing campaign's staff. Later that month, leaders of the DFL voted to permanently bar Warsame from seeking the party's endorsement for any elected office. In February 2025, Jerry McAfee, a local pastor and leader of a nonprofit contracted with the city as violence interrupters, disrupted a council meeting with violent threats and homophobic insults towards council members, when they considered temporarily transferring violence prevention programs to
Hennepin County authority. The Minneapolis Police Department met with McAfee and council leadership afterwards, but determined no crime had actually occurred. ==Structure==