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The payout to the family of David Smith was the second-largest for police misconduct in Minneapolis history.

The Minneapolis City Council voted to pay $3,075,000 to settle the law suit filed by the family of David Smith who was killed in a struggle with two police officers in 2010.

Residents will vote in November on a simplified and modernized city charter that, among other things, replaces “doth” with “do.”

Margo Ashmore Northeaster

A church site that once served seniors through a hot meal program may again serve seniors, in a different way. When the Northeast United Methodist leaders sold the former Trinity Methodist Church at 2501Taylor St. NE to Faith Tabernacle Ministries of the Church of God in Christ, they sold the newer building addition to Golden Nest for an assisted living and adult day care facility.

Eastside Meals on Wheels used to operate out of the church buildings before moving to Catholic Eldercare after the church went up for sale.

Hongjoo Lee is executive director of Golden Nest. Her plans call for eight residential rooms housing up to 15 people total, on the top floor of the 1960s-built education wing; that floor would include a living and dining room and chapel. On the lower floor, classrooms, kitchen and lounge would comprise the development achievement center (adult day facility). It will be called Golden Nest Assisted Living and Adult Day Center. Lee operates an assisted living facility nearby, at 1918 19th Ave. NE, the former Northeast House, and a smaller home in Richfield that she reopened recently when demand increased.

Golden Nest has been in business since 2005, and residents come by word of mouth, especially referrals from other clients and their case managers. There will be a variety of ages at the new facility, all seniors.

Lee said she plans an upscale new atmosphere with an event room and renovated kitchen for gatherings such as workshops or movies in the lower level, a classroom with computers, a physical therapy-occupational therapy area, exercise machines and a big classroom for the adult day center.

To prepare the living area, Golden Nest’s contractor will be renovating existing bathrooms to be handicapped accessible, adding showers, and generally remodeling, “a lot of cosmetics.”

The plans required asking the City of Minneapolis for a zoning change from R2B to R4, in which these uses both require a conditional use permit. Community Planning and Economic Development department staff Janelle Widmeier told the Northeaster the re-zoning was approved April 26.

Audubon Neighborhood Association sent a letter of support; ANA President Nic Baker said the group thought it would be a good resource for neighborhood seniors and not create any noise or traffic problems. “Will it be a worthwhile addition to the community? We think so,” Baker said.

The site contains what the city considers the appropriate amount of parking, shared between the church and Golden Nest using the spaces at different times. Widmeier noted that there will need to be separate access between the church and Golden Nest, and between levels, so that “customers and employees of non-residential uses do not have unsolicited access to hallways that include doorways [to] individual dwelling units.” Lee said she does have plans for making that separation.

And Widmeier asked for more detail and gave direction on the amount of landscaping and trees that would need to be added to the parking area and site in general to comply with city requirements. Lee said she will do the landscaping after the facility is open. “There’s a lot of money involved.”

Widmeier confirmed that final site plans need to be filed with the city but Golden Nest has two years from the date of approval to complete the landscape work. Documents recording the splitting of the lots and reciprocal easements to share the parking need to be filed with the county. “These are all administrative, and do not need to go to the City Council,” Widmeier said.

Lee said Golden Nest submitted the application for the construction permit, and applied for SAC (sewer access charge) this past week. “I’m working on schedules and the classes I might offer. I like Northeast Minneapolis and I’m so excited about opening in that area,” close to Central Avenue. Lee predicts it will happen in late June or sometime in July.

A church site that once served seniors through a hot meal program may again serve seniors, in a different way. When the Northeast United Methodist leaders sold the former Trinity Methodist Church at 2501Taylor St. NE to Faith Tabernacle Ministries of the Church of God in Christ, they sold the newer building addition to Golden Nest for an assisted living and adult day care facility.

Eastside Meals on Wheels used to operate out of the church buildings before moving to Catholic Eldercare after the church went up for sale.

Hongjoo Lee is executive director of Golden Nest. Her plans call for eight residential rooms housing up to 15 people total, on the top floor of the 1960s-built education wing; that floor would include a living and dining room and chapel. On the lower floor, classrooms, kitchen and lounge would comprise the development achievement center (adult day facility). It will be called Golden Nest Assisted Living and Adult Day Center. Lee operates an assisted living facility nearby, at 1918 19th Ave. NE, the former Northeast House, and a smaller home in Richfield that she reopened recently when demand increased.

Golden Nest has been in business since 2005, and residents come by word of mouth, especially referrals from other clients and their case managers. There will be a variety of ages at the new facility, all seniors.

Lee said she plans an upscale new atmosphere with an event room and renovated kitchen for gatherings such as workshops or movies in the lower level, a classroom with computers, a physical therapy-occupational therapy area, exercise machines and a big classroom for the adult day center.

To prepare the living area, Golden Nest’s contractor will be renovating existing bathrooms to be handicapped accessible, adding showers, and generally remodeling, “a lot of cosmetics.”

The plans required asking the City of Minneapolis for a zoning change from R2B to R4, in which these uses both require a conditional use permit. Community Planning and Economic Development department staff Janelle Widmeier told the Northeaster the re-zoning was approved April 26.

Audubon Neighborhood Association sent a letter of support; ANA President Nic Baker said the group thought it would be a good resource for neighborhood seniors and not create any noise or traffic problems. “Will it be a worthwhile addition to the community? We think so,” Baker said.

The site contains what the city considers the appropriate amount of parking, shared between the church and Golden Nest using the spaces at different times. Widmeier noted that there will need to be separate access between the church and Golden Nest, and between levels, so that “customers and employees of non-residential uses do not have unsolicited access to hallways that include doorways [to] individual dwelling units.” Lee said she does have plans for making that separation.

And Widmeier asked for more detail and gave direction on the amount of landscaping and trees that would need to be added to the parking area and site in general to comply with city requirements. Lee said she will do the landscaping after the facility is open. “There’s a lot of money involved.”

Widmeier confirmed that final site plans need to be filed with the city but Golden Nest has two years from the date of approval to complete the landscape work. Documents recording the splitting of the lots and reciprocal easements to share the parking need to be filed with the county. “These are all administrative, and do not need to go to the City Council,” Widmeier said.

Lee said Golden Nest submitted the application for the construction permit, and applied for SAC (sewer access charge) this past week. “I’m working on schedules and the classes I might offer. I like Northeast Minneapolis and I’m so excited about opening in that area,” close to Central Avenue. Lee predicts it will happen in late June or sometime in July.

© 2013 Northeaster

A neighbor said the Park Avenue house was known as crack house but the show’s host said it has historic value.

The body recovered Tuesday from the Mississippi River in St. Paul was identified as a high school student from western Wisconsin who jumped with his girlfriend last week from the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis.

Barry Voss has no right to apply for reinstatement; dissenting justices said a 4-year suspension would have been sufficient.

A few weeks ago, I went to CiviCon. As a fairly new end-user, this was an incredible experience. Not only did I learn an insane amount of information and receive a wonderful training at the User and Admin training, but I got to interact with other people that use CiviCRM in the same way I do. I am a fundraiser for the Secular Student Alliance, and everywhere I looked I saw other people using CiviCRM to raise money: from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, San Francisco Baykeeper, and so many more.

I wanted a place where I could keep coming back to these professional relationships. CiviCRM is such an incredible product because of the community built around it. Throughout the conference, all I was thinking is, “How can we make sure these interactions among users aren’t lost after this conference ends?”

One of the suggestions I heard was to take advantage of the forums. However, the forums can be a scary place if you aren’t a developer. Digging through the forums on using CiviCRM, the first post I saw was titled “CRM-8744 breaks sending emails to SMTP servers requiring TLS & authentication”.

Huh?

As a person untrained in any sort of coding, that is terrifying gibberish.

There is already a place on the Community Forums geared towards users: the “User Groups” subforum. However, it is heavily focused on language and country specific user communities. These are very important, but I want to see more communities focused on how non-profits use CiviRM. Two of these currently exist on the forums, but neither is very active.

I would like to propose an expansion of this user community. Rather than calling it “User Groups”, title the sub-forum “End-user Discussions: A place for End-users to exchange ideas, ask questions, and share suggestions.” This would be a board where End-users can come together and, in non-technical language, discuss problems and share solutions and innovations.

It would also be a place for more subforums to spring up. Using CiviCRM to send mass communications to people? Take part in a “Using CiviMail” subforum, where participants can share some of the tricks they have learned to dedupe mailing lists. Are you a professional fundraiser like I am? Check out “Fundraising with Civi” and see the cool customizations people are doing to their donation pages, or get advice on how best to construct your donation page.

I think these End-user forum spaces will be a starting point for an expansion of the End-user community. If you are interested in helping to make the forums a friendlier place for CiviCRM end-users, send me an email! I can be reached at jessica DOT kirsner AT secularstudents DOT org, and I would love to have help and input as I try to make this happen.

At CiviCon San Francisco, and at the sprints that followed, we spent a fair amount of time on the subject of ‘CiviCRM as a self-sufficient and financially sustainable ecosystem’. These discussions were wide ranging and super interesting (thanks to Peter Petrik from Skvare for his input and help facilitating). Following from these discussions, we have set ourselves two high level goals for the next 3 years:

• Make CiviCRM a financially sustainable ecosystem, funded primarily through its community of users and service providers
• Ensure that the community is aware of how much it costs to ‘run’ CiviCRM, and how any money that they contribute gets spent

These two goals are pretty closely related since if we are trying to do 1, then it is reasonable to expect 2.

In this blog post, I’d like to set the scene a little, and introduce one concrete way that we can get started out along this road: a service provider association.  There is lots more to say about the above two goals (please join in the conversation and watch out for more blog posts in the coming weeks and months) but for now, I’d like to concentrate on the service provider association.

Think of this blog post as a first draft for discussion and refinement before we start building stuff out. None of the ideas here are set in stone but we do want to take the first steps soon, so now is the time for input.  We want to hear your thoughts and ideas on the best ways forward. Let me know if we have missed anything important, and feel free to contribute extra details, and suggest ways in which we can improve things. We’d also like to have your help in building this out.  If you have resources you can put towards this, let me know.

We'll refine our plans over the next few weeks and then then start building.

How did we get here?

All of us in the CiviCRM community strongly believe in free, libre and open source software. However software is not 'free to produce'. CiviCRM software has been made possible primarily through generous contributions of foundations and forward-thinking non-profit organizations. Over the past few years there has been a substantial growth in the contributions of code, time, and money from people like you, i.e. our amazing community of users, implementers, and developers.

It's hard to believe but CiviCRM has been around for over 8 years now.  Looking around, you'll see a solid user base and a healthy service provider community.  So now seems like a good time to think about how we can sustain the momentum for the next 8, 16, and 32 years!

Why a service provider association?

A service provider association is a good focal point for an ‘iteration’ of sustainability. It is well defined and small enough for us to have some initial discussions, build out some infrastructure, and walk some way down the road to sustainability.

What is the time frame?

Our target is to build the service provider association over the next 5 months.  We’d like to have it ready in time for CiviCon London and the sprints that follow.  At that point we can review work so far and work out next steps.

What is the broad aim of the service provider association?

In broad terms, the aim is to provide a clear and transparent way for service providers to contribute financially to the sustainability of the project in a way that provides direct benefits for their organisations.

Who is it aimed at?

The service provider association is specifically aimed at service providers - not at end users (unless they are also providing CiviCRM services to other end users).  There are a few of other ways we’d like to encourage end users to engage and contribute (see below) but to keep things focused and manageable, we want to focus on service providers in this iteration.

Why should we join?

Our initial list of benefits (let us know if you have other ideas) includes:

• a prominent listing as a service provider on civicrm.org
• a ‘CiviCRM service provider’ badge for your website
• your logo (rotating though all service providers) on the civicrm.org home page
• a service provider thank you slide at all conferences
• 25% discount on CiviCon sponsorship
• a mention in the monthly CiviCRM newsletter when you join

Of course, the more fundamental benefit is that you’ll be contributing to a stable, sustainable CiviCRM that continues to improve and innovate, that you can use to satisfy client needs and build your client base, but you knew that :)

How much will it cost to become a member?

This model is draft: Membership fees will be based on a sliding scale of $1,000 per full time equivalent staff member per year.  So for example, a five person organization working with CiviCRM should expect to pay $5,000.

We can potentially look at modifying this scale for larger organisations at which only a small percentage of staff work on CiviCRM, so that, for example a 70 person shop with 12 people working full time on CiviCRM would only contribute $12,000.

At the moment, since the majority of our organisations are based in Europe and North America, a flat rate per full time equivalent seems appropriate. We may want to revisit these rates if and when we have significant numbers of service providers based in parts of the world with significantly lower billing rates.

What are the revenue goals?

Our goal is that the majority of active contributors and a significant percentage of the ‘additional service providers’ sign up. If we can generate between $50k and $100k in funding our first year, we'll be happy :)

How will the money be spent?

Initially, we’d like to assign the money from the service provider association to support the work of the core team. Some of the core teams key areas of work include:

• Co-ordinating contributions (technical and non technical) from the community
• Development and testing 'core CiviCRM' features
• Managing the release cycle and ‘make it happen’ (currently two releases per year)
• Critical CiviCRM bug fixes
• Running CiviCRM's infrastructure (including our websites, documentation, server hardware, and so on)
• Technical support via the forums, IRC and so on
• Community support for meet ups, training, sprints, camps and conferences

While it is true that the core team gets a considerable amount of help from the community in doing many the above tasks, it is fair to say that the core team is critical to getting the above 'out the door'. Hence we think it fair that they should receive the funding in the first instance. We expect to take some significant steps in better defining what is and isn’t ‘core’ over the next six to twelve months. And over time, we are open to collaborating with other organisations to get the above done.

For the record, this year, CiviCRM’s current annual budget is $550,000. The majority of our budget is spent on salaries (currently 9.5 fte), and the remainder is spent on server infrastructure, hardware and other miscellaneous items. If you are interested in more details about how the core team spends their time, you can look at the tools we use to co-ordinate our work, e.g. wiki.civicrm.org, issues.civicrm.org and forum.civicrm.org.

Do we need a core team?

There is a tendency to think that open source projects work ‘automagically’ - that the best ideas bubble up to the top, are developed, packaged and released into the wild through only the power of enlightened debate and voluntary collaboration. Unfortunately, it is not quite that simple. Have a look around at other long lived successful open source projects. You’ll see that they all have some funding model which drives them forward: Linux has the Linux foundation (a trade association); Wordpress.org has Wordpress.com (a paid for hosted service) and Ubuntu is supported by Canonical (a privately held company).

All open source projects have some source of funding that keep things turning and CiviCRM is no different. While we are very open to working out different ways to fund and deliver our work, we think there will always be the need for a core team constituted in some way to guide the project.

What about recognising other contributions?

CiviCRM would not be here today without all of the amazing contributions from our ecosystem of service providers and end users.  It is these contributions that allow us to really meet our users needs and to scale the project.

In building out our service provider association, we won’t forget or sideline these contributions, but they won't be our focus for this iteration. Following discussions at the sprints after CiviCon, our current thinking is that:

• we should be more transparent about why people are listed as ‘active contributors’
• our active contributors list should be as prominent as the service provider association
• we should phase out listings on civicrm.org for organisations that are neither members of the service providers association or active contributors.

We contribute in other ways - should we still join the service provider association?

Yes :) Granted, service providers with sustainable business models that contribute back to CiviCRM are vital to our community, and the more service providers that contribute back, the more we can scale.  But at the same time, if we accept that we will always need a core team, we will always need some income to fund this team, and joining the service provider association is a simple way you can contribute to this.

With that said, we recognise that CiviCRM is not a one size fits all community, that not everyone will want to join the service provider association, and that organisations can play a vital role in our community without being members.

How will the service provider association be governed?

We are keen to establish a workable mechanism for governing and representing the service provider association, and we want to avoid bureaucracy wherever possible. Our current thinking is that a board made up of 3-5 representatives of the association would be able to provide representation and any necessary co-ordination with the core team.

What other revenue streams are we exploring?

Other revenue streams that we have benefited from in the past and are still actively exploring include:

• Make it Happen i.e. crowd sourced contributions from both service providers and end users.  Note that approximately half of the 4.4 make it happens are being carried out by the core team, and the other half are being carried out by trusted developers (Make it Happen campaigns currently represent 5% of the project's total income)
• Major Sponsors i.e. multi-year projects from end users and service providers that are strategically aligned with the project's goals
• Foundation support
• 'Support CiviCRM’ contributions from end users and other contacts (see this blog post).

Don’t forget that there is nothing stopping you from helping us out with these revenue streams. We are especially interested to hear from any organisations that may want to become major sponsors or work with us to secure foundation support.

What are the next steps?

We’d like to work to the following time frame:

• Now till 7 June - preliminary discussions and recruit an implementation team
• 10 - 14 June - create first draft / alpha
• 15 - 28 June - blog post and feedback on first draft / alpha
• 29 June - 5 July - create second draft / beta
• 6 July - 21 July - blog post and feedback on first second draft / beta
• 22 July - 21 September: release candidate up and running
• 22 September: Service provider launched (members signed up)

Looking forward to your thoughts and participation!

A bottom-up effort by sixth-grade teachers raised scores at the heavily Latino Andersen School in Minneapolis. Now supporters want to expand.

Mentally ill prisoner died after bout of seizures untreated.

Minneapolis and St. Paul will get their first state aid increases in five years under the tax bill that passed the Legislature this week.

Ibrahim Hirsi TC Daily Planet

For years, Hennepin County residents traveled to Century Plaza in downtown Minneapolis to see their social workers and case managers for access to government assistance programs. A new project will relocate services throughout the county, offering shorter trips and shorter lines.

There's still time for your voice to be heard! Wednesday night (May 22), there will be another meeting for community input from 6-9 p.m. Previous meetings have had Hmong and Spanish translation, and this one will have Somali translation. The meeting is at Pica Head Start, 700 Humboldt Avenue North. Click here for more information on the North Minneapolis hub.

Hennepin County is closing down Century Plaza by the end of next year, taking its services closer to areas where clients live, work and attend schools. The county is moving human services to six human service centers, with each hub providing a full range of financial, social and public health services — just like those currently provided at Century Plaza. (See sidebar.)

As part of this project, Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department eyed a potential site in north Minneapolis: 1001 Plymouth Avenue. The now-vacant building was designed in the 1980s and once housed a print shop.

Officials from the county shared information about the proposed site May 14 with more than 60 community members and activists, who gathered at PICA Head Start in north Minneapolis.

“We want the hub to be closer to where people live and work,” said Rex Holzemer, Hennepin County assistant administrator. “We want them to get our assistance as easy as they can.”

Holzemer said clients who go to Century Plaza complain about the downtown service center.

“They said they hate going there,” he told the crowd. “They said it’s horrible.”

If all goes according to plan, the new site in north Minneapolis will be opened before the end of 2014.

“Wherever we put a hub site,” Holzemer said, “we’re going to partner with communities, whether it’s non-profit organizations or schools.”

 

Other new human service hubs

• Northeast Minneapolis - Health Services Building on Central Avenue
• Northwest Hennepin County - Northwest Family Service Center in Brooklyn Center, along with Osseo School District and Community Emergency Assistance Program
• South Suburban - Bloomington, in facility shared with Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People
• South Minneapolis - location undecided, possibly East Lake Street
• West Suburban - downtown Hopkins

Like the other five hubs, the new one in north Minneapolis will be close to multiple bus lines, efficient parking spaces, and have about 160 employees and serve approximately 200 clients each day.

“Every hub will be different, but will have the same type of services,” said Sharlene Shelton, Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health area manager. “Staff won’t have assigned offices or cubicles; they will select any space to work for the day.”

As it stands at the moment, the building appears very industrial, but the proposed renovation is expected to improve its appearance. The new edifice will have a friendly look with large windows and window wells.

County officials said that there has been a common concern about parking, but there is a plan for parking efficiency: Around the building are off-street parking and High-Praise Ministers has agreed to let clients use their parking lot during business hours.  

Community reactions

After officials presented the proposal, participants broke down into small groups — each led by a facilitator — to voice their opinions.

A. Willie Dominguez, a group facilitator, said his group had many concerns about the project.

Sharing the result of his group with the large group, Dominguez said: “I really want to thank my group because they were outspoken. They said that they don’t want the service there. Why? Why another one? They already got six in the community that serve. So why this one again?”

Kimberly Spates, a group facilitator, said her group would like to see a more diverse design that reflects the culture of north Minneapolis community.

“We’d like to see a more customer friendly place,” one participant said. “Currently, people at the Century Plaza are treated like numbers.”

In addition to the north Minneapolis hub, locations are being developed in northeast and south Minneapolis, Bloomington and Hopkins. The Northwest hub, in Brooklyn Center, opened last October.

 

For years, Hennepin County residents traveled to Century Plaza in downtown Minneapolis to see their social workers and case managers for access to government assistance programs. A new project will relocate services throughout the county, offering shorter trips and shorter lines.

There's still time for your voice to be heard! Wednesday night (May 22), there will be another meeting for community input from 6-9 p.m. Previous meetings have had Hmong and Spanish translation, and this one will have Somali translation. The meeting is at Pica Head Start, 700 Humboldt Avenue North. Click here for more information on the North Minneapolis hub.

Hennepin County is closing down Century Plaza by the end of next year, taking its services closer to areas where clients live, work and attend schools. The county is moving human services to six human service centers, with each hub providing a full range of financial, social and public health services — just like those currently provided at Century Plaza. (See sidebar.)

As part of this project, Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health Department eyed a potential site in north Minneapolis: 1001 Plymouth Avenue. The now-vacant building was designed in the 1980s and once housed a print shop.

Officials from the county shared information about the proposed site May 14 with more than 60 community members and activists, who gathered at PICA Head Start in north Minneapolis.

“We want the hub to be closer to where people live and work,” said Rex Holzemer, Hennepin County assistant administrator. “We want them to get our assistance as easy as they can.”

Holzemer said clients who go to Century Plaza complain about the downtown service center.

“They said they hate going there,” he told the crowd. “They said it’s horrible.”

If all goes according to plan, the new site in north Minneapolis will be opened before the end of 2014.

“Wherever we put a hub site,” Holzemer said, “we’re going to partner with communities, whether it’s non-profit organizations or schools.”

 

Other new human service hubs

• Northeast Minneapolis - Health Services Building on Central Avenue
• Northwest Hennepin County - Northwest Family Service Center in Brooklyn Center, along with Osseo School District and Community Emergency Assistance Program
• South Suburban - Bloomington, in facility shared with Volunteers Enlisted to Assist People
• South Minneapolis - location undecided, possibly East Lake Street
• West Suburban - downtown Hopkins

Like the other five hubs, the new one in north Minneapolis will be close to multiple bus lines, efficient parking spaces, and have about 160 employees and serve approximately 200 clients each day.

“Every hub will be different, but will have the same type of services,” said Sharlene Shelton, Hennepin County Human Services and Public Health area manager. “Staff won’t have assigned offices or cubicles; they will select any space to work for the day.”

As it stands at the moment, the building appears very industrial, but the proposed renovation is expected to improve its appearance. The new edifice will have a friendly look with large windows and window wells.

County officials said that there has been a common concern about parking, but there is a plan for parking efficiency: Around the building are off-street parking and High-Praise Ministers has agreed to let clients use their parking lot during business hours.  

Community reactions

After officials presented the proposal, participants broke down into small groups — each led by a facilitator — to voice their opinions.

A. Willie Dominguez, a group facilitator, said his group had many concerns about the project.

Sharing the result of his group with the large group, Dominguez said: “I really want to thank my group because they were outspoken. They said that they don’t want the service there. Why? Why another one? They already got six in the community that serve. So why this one again?”

Kimberly Spates, a group facilitator, said her group would like to see a more diverse design that reflects the culture of north Minneapolis community.

“We’d like to see a more customer friendly place,” one participant said. “Currently, people at the Century Plaza are treated like numbers.”

In addition to the north Minneapolis hub, locations are being developed in northeast and south Minneapolis, Bloomington and Hopkins. The Northwest hub, in Brooklyn Center, opened last October.