Hall Monitor: Witch's Hat repairs move forward

A few notes from a busy day at Minneapolis City Hall on Thursday:

🧙‍♀️ The Prospect Park water tower's observation deck — aka "the Witch's Hat" — could finally reopen to the public this fall.

• City council members voted to hire a contractor to complete necessary repairs to reopen the tower, which has been closed since 2019.
• Minneapolis originally budgeted $350,000 for the work in 2024, but needed to reopen the bidding process three times before a suitable contractor came forward, a city spokesperson told Axios.

❓ Minneapolis' top public safety official's job remains in limbo. The council failed to override Mayor Jacob Frey's veto of their rejection of community safety commissioner Todd Barnette's reappointment.

• Barnette, who oversees all emergency response in the city, including police, cannot serve past August without an affirmative council vote.

💾 Next month, the city council could, in effect, enact a one-year moratorium on data centers — just by opening debate on the proposal.

• Under city zoning codes, any "interim ordinance" becomes effective as soon as the council takes what's usually a pro-forma vote to "introduce" the legislation, city attorney Kristyn Anderson explained.
• Some downtown boosters see data centers as a means of rescuing falling property values in office towers, but some council members want the city to study the environmental and development risks.

What they're saying: "I do see the upside of increasing revenue for the city, but I want to know what the cost of it is, and I don't feel like that's clear," ordinance co-author Council Member Aurin Chowdhury told Axios.

• She moved to delay the ordinance's introduction to May 21.