Some Minneapolis City Council members are expressing frustration over the length, and level of productivity, at committee meetings.
"One, it is 3:24 y'all. We have to get out of here at 4:00 p.m. and we're not even done with our entire agenda."
That's a comment from one of the Minneapolis City Council members who was attempting to speed up an overly long meeting that never accomplished the work they set out to get done on Tuesday.
After spending hours talking about what to do about the site of Minneapolis' 3rd Police Precinct, and whether more community engagement was needed before they could vote on a plan to make it into a voting center, the Committee of the Whole deleted the whole item.
But not before comment from councilmember LaTrisha Vetaw who represents Ward 4.
"I don't think we're ever going to agree on how to do it, or who should do it, we all have very different feelings about the site," Vetaw says.
And then, councilmember Andrea Jenkins chimed in.
"We have to get some kind of control on these committee meetings," Jenkins says. "We can't go for four hours every committee meeting and then run out of time to hear important work that is moving forward."
The site on Minnehaha Avenue in south Minneapolis was chosen after literally years of debate on what to do with the precinct which was burned down during the riots following the killing of George Floyd in 2020.
The administration wants to turn the building into a community space and voting center. The council discussed the proposal for two hours. They voted 7-6 to pull it off the agenda. Several councilmembers say this is not what residents have been asking for, and saying more conversations with people in the neighborhood should happen first.
After Tuesday's meeting concluded, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey put out a statement showing his frustration, saying in part that despite the confusion and discord on the council, he is planning on moving forward with the plan anyway.
"We gave the council an opportunity to weigh-in and instead, they punted," said Frey.