Minneapolis Resident? Send a Message to Mayor Frey and City Council: Please keep the new $4 million for low-income home weatherization programs

Community Power, along with coalition partners and residents from around the city, (and the city itself) worked hard last year to win an additional annual $4-5 million for weatherization & environmental justice (detailed in previous blogposts).

In early August, we shared this following alert that the mayor's recommended budget would propose diverting this new $4 million to the general fund. 

It was publicly announced starting at this exact point in the City Council’s July 23rd Climate & Infrastructure Committee meeting. We heard from a council member that Mayor Frey had expressed plans to divert the estimated new $4 Million of Climate Legacy Initiative funding away from its intended purpose and toward the general budget. At that point the Council meeting, the city staff attending then responded that they were unaware of those plans. For some context, the city staff at the time were presenting a report showing that we have fallen behind on meeting our Climate Equity Plan goals.

Our First Big Update: Public Hearings to Restore Climate Equity Funding! 

This month we all have an opportunity at the Public Hearings for the budget to tell City Council and the Mayor to restore this funding.  

When: October 7th and October 19th, they will be starting at 6:05 PM both nights. 

Where:  City Hall (350 s 5th street), Room 380.

Each speaker (like you!) can speak for up to 2-minute spoken comment or by submitting a written comment electronically. 

Need help with talking points? Read on below

Important note: While the final public hearing and vote on the city budget won't be until December 15th, October is the most impactful time so that they have time to respond and make amendments to the budget. While last minute changes do sometimes occur, larger Council amendments to the budget are due November 18th. 

There's a groundswell of opposition to this cut funding. 

Last Wednesday, dozens of residents gathered at City Hall to take a stand for restoring these funds to the Climate Legacy Initiative (photo below from local news coverage).

Photo: Becca Gilbuena

At multiple times for over a decade, Community Power has expressed the importance of both 1) Raising city funds dedicated to resource equitable climate action, especially to create opportunities for cost-burdened households to reduce their energy cost burden and 2) Protecting those funds from getting diverted away from their originally intended use. Implemented well and at scale, those funds - raised through a percentage of our Xcel and CenterPoint bills - should ideally be used toward that purpose of not only rapidly reducing local emissions but also lowering energy bills through the savings from efficiency and switches to clean energy.  

All is not lost - your voice has made a difference before!

To his credit, in response to a similar push from Community Power back in 2019, Mayor Frey helped the City Council find $360,000 to restore a $600,000 gap in the sustainability budget. 

The sign we created in 2019 for the city budget hearing occasion. 

In addition, the 2023 Climate Legacy Initiative was $10 million thanks to many constituents writing and sending letters to the Mayor and Council. Help remind him what our goals are as a city!

Our advocacy - together as community members - will set the tone ahead of the next discussions of the budget process: 

Steps in the City Budget Process:

1. On August 12th - Mayor Frey released his recommended 2027 budget to the city council and gave the annual public speech marking the occasion. We heard the high-level overview on how different aspects of the budget fit together. The mayor did not speak about the Climate Legacy Initiative like he did in the 2025 annual budget address. In his 2027 recommended budget (which can be modified by the city council) the summary page for the health department provides a high-level overview of the Climate Legacy Initiative but does not go into granular enough detail to find out more regarding the estimated $4 million.
2. September 24th - City Council Budget Committee heard the presentation of the mayor's recommended budget for the Climate Legacy Initiative as one of many reviews of department budget proposals. 
3. September 9th, 23rd and 29th - The Board of Estimate and Taxation held initial public hearings set the maximum property tax levy (though that does not affect franchise fee revenue). 
4. October 7th and 19th and into November - The City Council takes constituent input by holding additional public hearings.  are before voting on amendments to the mayor’s initial budget.
5. December 15th - Final City Budget Public Hearing
6. December 17th - The City Council finalizes changes, adopts the budget, and sends it to the mayor.

Turning climate action into real results starts with defending our democracy and good governance to help protect our ability to win the funding our communities need. 

Tell the City Council, too!

"Make the Climate Legacy Initiative into a dedicated fund and ramp it up to $118M per year by 2030"

Email to the full council at: [email protected]  or look up your specific Councilmember. 

Background on why a "dedicated" fund is needed:

The fund is not yet legally protected - though City leaders have essentially committed in ordinance and in name of the fund - to be used for climate action. That's why formal dedication of a fund is essential to prevent these funds from changing winds and whims in City Hall. 

The ordinances which raised this extra $4-5 million do not specify the purposes for the funds but simply lay out how much for the city to collect. 

Community Power received recognition in the Mill City Hall Podcast on the Proposed Budget: Winners, Losers and Levies.

Starting at the 30 minute and 30 second mark in the podcast link above, there was a 3-minute segment which dove into the topic of dedicated funding:  

Former City Councilmember Cam Gordon, who co-hosts the podcast, revealed that the original plan was to dedicate this new franchise fee money to address climate change by ordinance so that it can't be diverted to go anywhere else.

But then there came a point when city leaders (which Cam Gordon recalls included Jacob Frey) essentially said “sure, we'll spend it on climate issues, but don't make an ordinance out of it”.

That is why the Climate Legacy Initiative is not formally dedicated fund in that same way as other things in the city budget like the city-owned utilities are.

To clarify, Mayor Frey used the 2023 Climate Legacy Initiative as a key victory of his time in office while campaigning for re-election in 2025. Mayor Frey again voiced commitment to protect the $10 million from the original Climate Legacy Initiative during one of the Minneapolis Clean Energy Partnership meetings in 2025 despite budgetary pressures. And yet, the more recent $4 million increase went unsigned by the mayor though it was supported and passed by a 10-3 vote on the City Council.

This segment included the quote: "Community Power is out there banging the drum on this saying tell the mayor and the city council not to do this" in reference to telling the city not to divert this new $4-5 Million in Climate Legacy Initiative Funding. 

Towards a diversity of funding: 

The franchise fees and the "Climate Legacy Initiative" is one piece of the puzzle. Scientists and economists are clear: we can't overdo investment in climate mitigation and adaptation because the risks and harm are so great.

Because the utility franchise fee can’t be adjusted to create more funding more than once a year, we'll also need to rapidly consider and implement a diversity of nimble, locally controlled funding sources such as: Green Bonds, increases to the Pollution Control Annual Registration fee, a municipal Geothermal option, dedicated taxes on data centers, or other funding sources that the city can be creative about generating.

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Advancing Energy Democracy
Organizing our efforts to maximize impact and drive change.

Community Power channels its expertise into three focused program areas. By addressing challenges at the state, city, and grassroots levels, we’re building a sustainable and equitable energy future for all.

Our Second Big Update: We now have the Granular Numbers

The Sept 24th Climate Legacy Initiative Budget Presentation finally gave us some granular numbers on the mayor’s plan to divert this new $4-5 million to fill gaps in the general budget. You can hear city staff presenting it starting at the 1 hour 24-minute mark in this video, followed by commentary from city councilmembers attending. 

These proposed cuts were not pleasant to hear about especially given that Minneapolis has found that these programs have had tremendous cost and energy savings for families who got the upgrades. But the city council is tasked with drafting and voting on Amendments to the Mayor’s recommended budget.

Highlights of what we recently learned from the Climate Legacy Initiative budget presentation:

The total dollar amount of "recommended divestments" relative to this year's budget is $4,061,526.

This slide below from the presentation gives more specifics as to the programs facing proposed cuts: 

The administration did clarify some guiding principles behind their priorities on what is most important to fund under the Climate Legacy Initiative umbrella:

The areas above the red line in the chart below are the initiatives that met those guidelines for priority. The areas below the red line did not and are set to receive sharper cuts than the items above. Note that item #1 on this list is the residential energy efficiency work that we most often speak about. But it is still receiving a 7-figure number for proposed cuts despite being above that red line.   

Of note, we need to have the workforce in place to carry out accelerated weatherization and energy improvements.      Making 50%+ cuts to green careers and workforce risks undermining our ability to ramp up the overall funding in later year that matches the scale we need in order to the city's meet climate goals. 

City staff also stated recognition that making steep cuts in climate equity spending next year would be dissonant with the city of Minneapolis' ambitious science-based carbon reduction goals. We would need to step up decarbonization efforts on the scale of about 6-8 times more than what we are doing now in the next 5 years. We would need the Climate Legacy Initiative to be about $118 million by 2030 in order for these targets shown below to be more than mere lofty, aspirational goals on paper:   

For residential weatherization, here are some specifics that paint the picture on how it would look next year absent city council passing some amendments to the mayor's recommended budget:   

As you can see, residential Green Cost Share alone has resulted in $107 Million in energy savings and has created hundreds of jobs. So, this is a priority where we arguably receive more money back through energy savings than the initial dollars invested in it. 

But these cuts go through, approximately 220 homes will have to wait another year for weatherization and to pay more for utilities until then. 

To provide a clearer picture, here are some specific programs within the umbrella residential weatherization and who is contracted to carry out the work:

In addition, we also have a slideshow from August 20th when City Staff responded to questions that city councilmembers posed about the Climate Legacy Initiative. 

To clear up any potential confusion, here is a chart from another presentation showing all 4 total streams of revenue that resource the city's sustainability, climate and environmental related budget. It is only the new funding stream that started in 2026 that the mayor is proposing to divert to fill gaps in the general budget. 

Here is a description of what the various key programs are and how much funding each has this year. 

Join Us in Building a Better Energy Future

Together, we can create an energy system that works for everyone. Ready to make an impact? Visit our website at www.communitypowermn.org, or reach out to us directly today. Let’s create change—together.