The Duluth City Council met on Monday, January 13, 2025, at 7:00 PM in the Council Chamber. The meeting began with a Committee of the Whole session featuring a legislative update from lobbyist Eric Simonson (Flarity & Hood), followed by the regular council meeting which included the election of officers for 2025, approval of minutes, public comments, and a consent agenda of 20 resolutions adopted unanimously. Additionally, the council considered a separate resolution for a lease with the University of Minnesota and a second reading of an ordinance for airport grants.
All 19 consent agenda resolutions were adopted unanimously (9-0). Key items included:
Yeah, we're gonna work. Oh, yeah. Okay. Oh, sorry, number one. Exactly how you see it. I would feel like it's the other way, but you're sitting here and you're actually seeing it as I know, right? It's kind of backwards. Well, good evening, counselors. Good evening, everyone. We'll begin. We have a committee of the whole, and tonight we're going to welcome uh our lobbyist Eric Simonson. He's with the firm of Flarity and Hood to talk about and give us a legislative update. We'd like to welcome you, uh Eric, up to the uh lectern. Well, thank you, Chair Randorf and counselors. Uh it's great to be here even on this cold evening here in Duluth. But appreciate the time to take a few minutes and just talk about uh legislative session upcoming and how it's going to interact with some of the legislative priorities that the City of Duluth has laid out. Uh just by way of introduction, again, my name is Eric Simonson. I work with the law firm of Flarity and Hood. I've been there for almost uh this will be my fifth session now working for them as a lobbyist, and we are excited to have the City of Duluth on board as a client and excited to help the city move some of their projects forward uh in what can probably be best described as what will be a challenging legislative session for sure. Uh but I thought I'd take a few minutes and just talk a little bit about where the legislature is at as a whole, as well as in terms of where they're at in terms of their organizing, and then kind of lead into a little bit about where we're at with some of your uh initial initiatives on some of your projects. Um I think you know, everybody's probably paying attention to a lot of the news and the media around what's happening at the legislature, and it's it's very interesting, and there's a lot of really unprecedented things happening. But I think if we could just go back and kind of review some of the facts, and I'll just lay some of this out for you over the course of a few minutes because I think it's important as we think about the end game in this legislative session and some of the things that you want to see get done. Um, of course, we had uh uh election in November, um, no Senate election necessarily except for a special election in Minnetonka, and that was the results of a vacancy that was uh created in the Minnesota Senate. But the results of the November election in the Senate were 34 Democrats, 33 Republicans. So a very slim majority carrying forward in the Minnesota Senate. Um and then just recently uh you probably saw that Senator Kerry Dietzik, who is uh senator from Minneapolis uh passed away from cancer. Uh very unfortunate and very sad. Um but our special election for that seat will be held on January 28th, which means that starting the legislative session, we will essentially be in a tie in the Minnesota Senate. Um addition, uh, in terms of other Senate activity, uh Senator Nicole Mitchell, who is uh the senator from Woodbury, um, has a uh felony trial in Becker County starting on January 27th. Uh the results of that could impact the majority in the Senate going forward throughout the session, remains to be seen. Um, but there is just more to watch there, and I think the point is that they're very close. Um, but assumably after January 28th election is certified, uh, the DFL will control the Minnesota Senate by one seat. Um the entire House of Representatives was up for election in November, and the results of the election after election day uh gave us a 6767 tie in the House of Representatives. Has not happened since 1979. Uh very rare occurrence, obviously. Um, and with some of the challenges with the election, uh, we had a court challenge in Roseville while we had a Democrat win that seat. Um it turned out that that Democrat was not a resident of the district and decided to quote unquote resign his ability to be seated in the House of Representatives. That places the House of Representatives with 67 Republicans and 66 Democrats. Uh clearly they have the majority of those sitting, um, but there are questions around that when it comes to power sharing agreements and who will control the House of Representatives starting tomorrow at noon. In addition, there's been a court challenge in the Scott County race. Uh again, a Democrat won there by a total of 14 votes. Uh we know that 20 of the right-in ballots were disposed of without being counted. Uh that has worked itself almost entirely through the court process. Uh, we're still awaiting a judge ruling on whether or not that individual should be seated or not, or if there should be a special election. Um remains to be seen. We as of late this afternoon, anyway. We had no uh judge ruling in that particular case. So this really brings into question about who's gonna control the Minnesota House of Representatives tomorrow going forward, at least for the next few weeks. Tomorrow typically is the first day of session, it's typically very ceremonial. A lot of families get involved.