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Serving the Stevens Square-Loring Heights Neighborhood

1900 Nicollet Avenue #216, Minneapolis, MN 55403  Phone: (612) 440-0247  www.stevenssquare.org

Meeting of the Board of Directors

Agenda for Tuesday, December  7, 2025 at 6 PM

Plymouth Church room 215, and on Zoom

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The purpose of this meeting is to conduct the business of the SSCO Board, which makes its decisions based upon the work of the committees, and to have committee chairs make their reports to the Board. Only Board members can vote on motions and when appropriate, motions can be opened to the floor for discussion. Discussions will follow parliamentary procedure.

Any person who wishes to be on the agenda for a Board meeting should contact the Board Chair in writing at board@stevensquare.org ten (10) days in advance of the next scheduled Board Meeting. The Executive Committee reviews all requests and prepares the agenda.

SSCO recognizes that name and gender identity are central to most individuals' sense of self and well-being, and that it is important for SSCO to establish mechanisms to acknowledge and support individuals' self-identification. One way we can support identity is by honoring the name and pronouns that each of us go by.

Many people might go by a name in daily life that is different from their legal name. In our gatherings, we seek to refer to people by the names that they go by.

Pronouns can be a way to affirm someone's gender identity, but they can also be unrelated to a person's identity. They are simply a public way in which people are referred to in place of their name (e.g. "he" or "she" or "they" or "ze" or something else). At all SSCO Board and committee meetings, you are invited (if you want to) to share what pronouns you go by, and we seek to refer to people using the pronouns that they share. The pronouns someone indicates are not necessarily indicative of their gender identity.

City of Minneapolis Land Acknowledgement: As we meet here today, we are reminded that Minneapolis is situated on the homelands of the Dakota people. An area that is steeped in rich Indigenous history, and today is home to Indigenous people from more than 30 different nations. As a City, we have a responsibility to care for the land on which we live and work and all of its natural surroundings. This stewardship is an integral part of our involvement in SSCO, and we honor it as we begin our meeting.

Attendees: Ken Strobel (he/him), Adam Schnieder (he/him), John Kiel (he/him), Karen Ives (she/her), Maureen Wells (she/her), Robert Perdriau (he/they), Lydia Millard (she/her), Khrys Wetzel (he/they), Anna Palm (she/her), Shykala Brinkman (she/they), Katie Dillon (she/her), Anthonette Sims (she/her)

6:00: Minutes & Agenda

• Approve minutes from the December Board Meeting

• Motion to approve: Maureen, Seconded by Robert. Unanimous vote to approve.

• Approve today’s agenda.

• Motion to approve: Maureen, Seconded by Robert. Unanimous vote to approve.

6:10 Executive Director:

• Lydia Millard - Update on tasks/projects/processes

• New hire has a delayed start due to covid: has experience with corporate grant writing
•  Amendments will be made to job description to clarify contract worker status, who will be reporting to instead of supervised by Lydia

• Continued weekly status with staff
• 12/2- Coordinated Neighborhood Fundraise Campaign Discussion

• 9 Neighborhood organizations met as a group to discuss a coordinated "support your neighborhood organization" fundraising campaign in 2025. This would be separate from busy holiday time and Give to the Max, as there is so much competition during this time.
• Draft of the letter was sent 12/6 via email to SW group for any edits/additions. Also to include any organizations who were not able to make the 12/2 meeting.
• was submitted on 12/17
• NCR Neighborhood Day Request Letter

• Neighborhood Day happens in May, which is the target time for this
• Have meetings coming up with NCR to roll this out

• Do we have a goal amount?

• Not yet

• Is this neighborhood by neighborhood or a pool?

• Neighborhood by neighborhood. A pool would be too difficult to coordinate fund distribution.

• 12/3-  Met with Rebecca (Family Tree Clinic). Discussed tabling June Event: 50th Celebration/Red Hot Art Fair. Also discussed participation at the event in March        

• Asked them to get involved in our events, especially tabling in the park, do we have training opportunities to the staff and community on what they do, how can we partner with other businesses (Axis Medical)

• Would they be willing to join the Board or a committee?
•         Lydia is going to connect with the ED to discuss this        - can someone join the Board, a Safety Walk, etc         

• 12/9-  Met with Aileen Johnson- Neighborhood Safety Walks

• Discussed Ken attending monthly meetings for safety association
• Will combine safety walks starting in the Spring

• Aileen works on community Safety Walks in various neighborhoods, usually in orange shirts

• CEF (Cooperative Energy Fund)- Adam and I talked with Kyle to outline better advertising/flyers and launch.
• Robert Skafte Memorial- Women’s Club

• News coverage from KSTP- 5 ABC on 12/8
• https://kstp.com/kstp-news/top-news/true-man-of-community-remembering-loring-parks-robert-skafte-one-year-after-slain/ 

• 12/10- Happy Hour with Property Owners

• Mint Properties, Yellowtree

• Brian Walters, Jim Ruebin- discussed what do we want to see for our neighborhood in regards to property owner involvement? How do we get uninvolved owners involved, how to leverage connections
• Is Brian interested in the Rental Rebate? We collaborate so much with YellowTree, maybe they would interested

• 12/11- Interview with 2 Grant Writers  
• 12/12 - Meeting with Brian Siska from PCC

• Discussed collaborating more this year and how PCC can be more involved in SSCO

• They do Safety Walks, agreed to attend some meetings
• Discussed tabling at some events
• Discussed support with initiatives like meeting with MPD and City Council
• Provided them updates with what we’ve done
• They understand they should partner, collaborate and want to be present without overtaking

• Katie is involved in PCC, Maureen asked if she had any ideas

• Brian and Katie on the Campus Task Force. There is discussion internally about how they want to be neighbors. Recognize a big opportunity for PCC folks to engage more. Historically, PCC folks have a “how do we fix it” mentality, trying to ground folks in listening and show up and supporting what is already happening. Folks are excited to build more bridges with community and show up more in relationship.
• Karen asked if PCC would ever be interested in a joint event

• Katie says yes- there are many avenues. The church is committed to supporting the arts, and there are natural ways we can coordinate and build.
• Karen: We used to do more with the church in the past, it was a great relationship. There were problems later when development came up, but there were some nice collaborative events.

• 12/16- Listening Session with Sheriff Witt- Discussed issue with overflowing jails, cadet graduating class

• Lydia asked why we’re not seeing a large MPD presence.

• Overflowing jails, neighboring jails won’t accept more. Once jails become crowded, issues in jail increase. Space becomes a consideration for arrests.
• Karen: mental health holds contribute to this number, not enough beds for treatment
• Lydia: most of the folks in jail are in there for legal charges
• Cadets are graduating (2 full classes), but it takes 2 years for them to get settled. Could be 1-3 years to see this in the community.

• Question is what to do in the meantime?
• Karen: someone of it is juvenile crime and there is no secure facility, which makes a revolving door
• There was discussion of the facility on 1800 Chicago as a poor facility for the money poured in

• 12/17- Beacon Legislature Preview- supportive housing operator and developer, partnership with policy committee

• Create a new sales tax as dedicated revenue for housing- shelter/supportive housing, rental vouchers, home ownership

• Beacon is a company that works on getting homeless folks into stable housing and lobby at city hall

• Karen: Plymouth neighborhood foundation was the first that came out of the neighborhood to do housing. Beacon came out of this. We were one of the first neighborhoods they did investments in. One of their buildings on 3rd avenues has problems, so there are questions about that. They are very influential
• Maureen: we would love to get them into an NDC meeting
• Lydia: went to talk with them about their goal/mission for 2025. They will be lobbying for the sale tax idea listed above. Understand the reason behind it, addressing homelessness is either a priority or not depending on who is in power. This tax would make it a continual source of support/commitment regardless of who is in power. Many are one paycheck away from being unhoused. Outside of this, Lydia wanted to find out who to connect with and how to get them involved and put ourselves as SSCO back out there which is why entities don’t reach out to us to keep us in the loop. We need to be at the table.
• Maureen: Recuperative care facility license applications are reopened (?)

6:30 New Business

• CVS is closing Feb 11th
• Grant Writer Hire- Selected Ashely for the position

Ashley provide an introduction: Why you choose to work for SSCO, experience and what you would like to see in this position. 

• Ashley absent due to illness

• Application from new board member: Anthonette Sims-
• Approve Board Calendar

•  Changes to be made:

• Neighborhood cleanup monthly april-oct
• Are we officially doing the 50th?

• Contingent on grants

• December 2025 Potluck event
• Motion to approve by Maureen, seconded by Robert

• Discussion: can this calendar be changed? Yes
• Approval: unanimous vote to approve.

•  
• SSCO Team and Board Goals-discussion

• Postponed until next meeting to include Ashley

6:50 Greening Coordinator Update

• December Greening Report

• Katie: Climate committee at PCC may be willing to help sponsor memberships for folks signing up for CEF. Adam will connect

7:00 Communication & Outreach Manager Update

• Monetary Request: $22, 100 business cards for Khrys from gotprint.com

• Approved

• December Communication & Outreach Report 

• MIA used to display art at Red Hot- would they be willing to come to SS to display?
• Have done candidate forums in the past in SS, have voting information at events- combined with other neighborhoods and sponsored an event for folks to speak.

• Potential partnership with PCC, and other neighborhoods
• Karen: Add neighborhood community connections conference, they want neighborhood booths and will have a section for this. We would like a presence.

• We would like to table, Maureen is willing to table.
• Do we want to share space with Loring Park? Lydia can sign us up.

• Will need to make sure printed materials are updated

• Get Katie a copy of flyers for CEF when it’s done
• We need to promote the Cookbook more

• 2025 Planning Calendar

7:10 Committees:

• Treasurer Report

• We previously reviewed a projection of the budget, there are 2 we have to approve tonight
• 1 contract budget with Neighborhood Community Relations (NCR)

• Back in 2020 NCR came up with a funding scheme for neighborhoods, and we are still operating under the 2020 contract, going into 2025

• 2025 we are carrying over the funds from 2020
• Basically we get 70k from the city, but because we didn’t have staff for 2 years, we have about 30k leftover from 2024 we can rollover to 2025

• We need to approve the contract budget and let the city know we’ve approved it and then they sign off and we get the  new contract and the money
• We have 15k coming to us in 2025 in one fund, 55k from another, and a rollover of about 30k
• Questions?
• Motion to pass: Maureen, Seconded by Robert. Unanimous vote to approve.

• Operating Budget

• It outlines every month of the year. Karen made a cheatsheet to just look at totals and expenses for our bottom line.
• What’s important to know is what is coming in and out
• Revenue

• we were pretty successful with GTTM- got about $4700

• We received another donation at the end of the year, ($50) yay!
• How do we get the zeffy (online contributions) transferred over?

• Khrys will look into who has access to these funds

• Nhoods 2020 4140 is Neighborhoods 2020 (contract budget above)
• 4110- NRP (neighborhood revitalization program) is a program we had back in 1990 (which helped neighborhood orgs grow) when there was more community org power. This is what is left of those funds.

• We will use almost half of that if we don’t get new revenue
• Hopefully we will replenish what we spend, once it’s spent from this fund it’s gone. In the past, we’ve tried to rely less on this fund in relation to the other, but we have more staff who will hopefully help us generate more

• Expenses

• Most are staffing, payroll, etc
• $2000 added for gardens, $4000 for a community mailer, we can revisit funds needed for

• Questions?

• John: Were our insurance policies after the snow shoveling program reviewed?

• Lydia: This came up with conversations with the pilot. Were told to create a waiver liability form so we are not responsible.

• John: Waivers are great but don’t prevent lawsuits
• Adam: Can get that double-checked by the city but we should be good in terms of insurance policy. Part of the city’s funds can be towards expanding insurance.

• Maybe this is just talking with our insurance company?
• Lydia: the rep I talked with should be able to let us know.
• Adam has a meeting with someone this week.
• John: this is a high risk activity so we need to make sure we have this covered.

• Motion to approve by Maureen, seconded by Robert. Unanimous vote to approve second budget.

• Finance: Review Finance budget for Jan 2025

• 2025 Draft Budget 
• 2025 NCR Budget 

• Give to the Max- additional funds update. All funds raised will be deposited into SSCO bank account by end of week Jan 10th. Wanted to account for last minute donations for tax purposes.

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• Grants waiting in review

• RFP Community Engagement Pool- City of Minneapolis Public Works- $300K (Jan 2025-80 applications to review)
• MRAC Flexible Art Grant- $25K (Apr 2025)

• NDC/EEC: NDC/EEC December Report

• Letter to city should go to city council, city commissioner, mayor, and others
• Karen: We can send a copy to Loring and Whittier so they know what we sent?
• Edits: Add date, Needs to be signed (by Ken and Lydia), change the font so the signatures can fit
• Maureen: we have power because these folks are up for elections
• Karen motions to approve, Robert seconded. Unanimous vote to approve.
• When do we want to do an eval of the ED?

• Maureen: What I have seen is doing an eval when we can get it out ahead of time would be helpful. Do we want it to go to co-chairs and board members

• Karen: Evaluation should be sent to each board member and co-chair by the Board Retreat (2/15), completed then compiled, and reviewed in person at the next Executive Committee Meeting (24th of Feb).

• This would be a 6 month review, the form probably needs updates before then.

• Safety: Safety December Report

• Updated Safety Team Volunteer Application- removed verbiage regarding background check  

• Meeting on the 12th didn’t work out
• Community Crime Specialist sent out a report
• Next Meeting at the end of this month
• Meeting with Aileen Johnson
• Continuing to update application so more people can get on board
• Fair House Testing

• You get $75 to pose as a potential tenant to see if landlords are being fair to applicants as per tenant rights
• Karen: Who funds this?

• This is through the city

• There aren’t a lot of opportunities

• If interested, contact Lydia
• Lydia is in talks to host a separate training about this (1hr), once certified, they call when they need you. About once or twice a month

7:55 2025 SSCO Goals

• Lydia: Rent Rebate program updates kind of on backburner; landlords have not be attending meetings
• Safety

Goal:

1. Non-emergency assistance and MPD alternatives to mitigate drug dealers/crime and unhoused residents
2. Partner/Collaborate with other Safety Walk Coalitions
3. Provide training and educational opportunities for Safety committee members (ie. Narcan training, Housing Inspection…etc.)

• Increase Participation in SSCO Events

        Goal:

        1. Send out mailers to every resident in SS-LH area. Provide door hangers for         select apt complex. Provide window flyers for businesses in SS-LH. Advertise         events  via radio (off-air & on-air), website, partnerships  

        2. Increase traffic to newsletter and social media channels with targeted                 advertising.

        3. Continue to build relationships with businesses and residents in the                 neighborhood.

        4. Continue landlord monthly meetings

• Funding

        Goal:

1. Create additional streams of income via grants
2. Use the additional income for:

-maintain current staff

-staff hire: event coordinator

-general hire: safety non emergency assistance

-provide additional security for property managers (ie. exterior/interior cameras, key fob/tenant only access to packages- smartphone package locker)

        This is if we get grants (fobs are expensive). These things in combination would be helpful for securing buildings and packages.

-host more community events

-provide raises for current staff

8:00 Wrap up and vote to adjourn

• Motion to adjourn: Maureen, seconded by Robert, Unanimous vote to adjourn.

• Honorary Mention: Rent Rebate Program/Landlord Integration  

        Goal:

        1. Will revamp with more process, routines and accountability/

        2. Include each property in the rent rebate program.

        3. Create a survey to send to landlords that will help update our demographic,         provide creative solutions for rent rebate revamp and create a better story for                 grant proposals.

        4. Send out SSCO Monthly Newsletter to Landlords to provide to tenants.

        5. Create a recurring monthly meeting with landlords

UPCOMING EVENTS AND MEETINGS

Visit stevenssquare.org to view additional events and volunteer opportunities

Stevens Square Community Organization Mission Statement

SSCO provides a respectful forum for community involvement and leadership that builds on neighborhood strengths to promote and improve Stevens Square-Loring Heights as a fun place to live, work, and play. SSCO works to strengthen Stevens Square-Loring Heights by initiating, integrating, and implementing key priorities:

● Economic development (housing and commercial development)

● Community safety

● Clean green environment

● Building community through the arts

● Community involvement